…ttle revelations — who knew any remained? — of the art of figures we thought we knew too well. Carleton Watkins: The Stanford Albums: The Stanford University Libraries presented to the public for the first time at the Cantor Arts Center the full riches of albums they received decades ago in which the luckless but relentless Carleton Watkins recorded the prising open of the American West by alien forces both commercial and cultural. Lines on the H…

…rivate hands, died Tuesday, Oct. 22, at her home on the Peninsula. Her death was confirmed Thursday, Oct. 24, by the Anderson Collection at Stanford University, a museum showing the core of their collection. No cause was given. She was 92. The Andersons liked to portray themselves as plain folk to befit their shared nickname “Hunk and Moo,” but they were sophisticated and timely in their collecting of artworks that were often abstract and beyond…

…ave 121 works to open the museum in 2014. The new additions kick off a $10 million fundraising effort to enhance the exhibition schedule at the museum. The Anderson Collection at Stanford University is celebrating its fifth anniversary. Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle 2014 As part of the fifth anniversary celebration, the Anderson exhibition space — 16,000 feet on two floors — has been reinstalled for the first time since its opening. This inclu…

…son Collection building  (see “Stanford University Adds Third Building to New Arts District“) will be located at the entrance to the campus, adjacent to the Cantor Arts Center. It is the latest addition to Stanford’s newly created arts district, which includes the recently opened Bing Concert Hall and the McMurty Building for the department of art and art history. Jason Linetzky, the longtime director of the collection, is overseeing the move of…

Among the 121 major pieces of postwar American art he has given to Stanford, Harry W. “Hunk” Anderson has bled for just one — Frank Stella’s “Zeltweg,” a heavy, nine-piece, mixed-media painting that resembles a kids’ slot car track. So when it arrives by heavy Freightliner on a mid-August morning, Anderson and his wife, Mary Margaret (Hunk and Moo, as they are known to just about everyone who has ever met them), come by to see its installation a…

…represented, among them Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Wayne Thiebaud and Joan Mitchell, joining Motherwell et al. The crown jewel is Pollock’s horizontal drip painting “Lucifer” (1947), one of his most important works. The Andersons are said to have turned down an offer of $50 million for “Lucifer,” made in the mid-1990s by music mogul David Geffen. The canvas that once hung over Putter’s girlhood bed is easily…

…anford’s Bing Concert Hall last year, may not be on the same plane as Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth or even Mario Botta’s original concept for SFMOMA, now under siege as a result of that museum’s expansion, the building is simple and unpretentious, Most importantly, it provides a tasteful showcase for the art – the majority of which is installed on the expansive second floor – while not overshadowing it. Cleres…

…th different media, Twist acquires a vocabulary of visual effects that he can incorporate into his performances. The stage, then, becomes Twist’s playground. Twist concluded his presentation by giving a live performance of his puppeteering. With Rothko’s “Pink and White over Red” as his backdrop, Twist commanded the floor, armed with a translucent white expanse of silk cloth. Puppeteering is an art form that engages the entire body, as Twist quic…