Welcome to the Anderson Collection
Stanford University's free museum of modern and contemporary American art

Open Wed - Sun

11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Advance reservations not required.
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Jason Linetzky named first director of the Anderson Collection at Stanford University

Jason Linetzky, Director, Anderson Collection at Stanford University Jason Linetzky has spent the better part of his 20-year career working with one of the world’s most coveted private collections of 20th-century American art: the Anderson Collection. The collection was built over the last 50 years by Bay Area residents Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson, and by their daughter, Mary Patricia Anderson Pence. The core of the collection, pledged…

Construction on Anderson Collection art museum begins

REPORT: Stanford

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Top-Flight Ab-Ex Collection Anchors Stanford’s New Art District

…ackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Ellsworth Kelly, to name a few. There are also a number of works that represent movements in California art, including Bay Area Figurative and Light & Space. The collection was assembled over the course of 50 years by Bay Area collectors Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson along with their daughter Patricia Anderson Pence. The Andersons, originally from the East…

Anderson Collection at Stanford to open September 21

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Anderson Collection pieces lock in a home at Stanford

…“The Anderson Collection is absolutely, unquestionably world class,” says Jeffrey Fraenkel of Fraenkel Gallery, the prominent San Francisco dealer in photography, a genre not included in the Anderson Collection. “Museums all over the country had their eyes on it hoping to get it until Hunk and Moo made their decision in favor of Stanford.” The Andersons did not choose Stanford because they went there. They didn’t, and neither did their only chil…

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Anderson Collection of 20th century American art, opens at Stanford on Sept. 21

…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…

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Anderson Collection has a new home

…n 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. Clerestories allow for filtered natural light on either side of a central staircase that has a curved ceiling above it; best of all, an…

Stanford trustees visit new art collection, approve construction

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‘Animating the Inanimate’: Redefining an art form

…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…

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Suit up: Step into the Vibrant, Colorful and Furry World of Artist Nick Cave

…world saw on video, beaten Rodney King. Cave’s first Soundsuit was a kind of safe haven, fully concealing the identity of the wearer at a time when the artist felt profoundly unsafe. The suits still hide, and have the potential to protect, the person inside one of these intricate pieces made from dismissed or cast-off objects such as plastic toys, pipe cleaners, and varicolored faux-fur. But over the years, Cave’s project has expande…

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Fashion statements: Nick Cave’s Soundsuits come to Stanford

…nd-me-downs passed to him from his six older siblings. Cave created his first soundsuit in 1992 as a response to the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles and the subsequent riots. This suit was made from fallen twigs gathered in Chicago’s Grant Park. He drilled holes in each twig and then sewed them together. His intention was not to create wearable art, but it was only after he slipped the suit of twigs over his head and heard the sound o…

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Why US universities are investing in their art museums

Over the past decade, many university leaders and donors have come to the same conclusion: investment in the arts is essential to building a competitive institution in an increasingly global world. This year, around half a dozen new museums and arts centres are opening on campuses across the country, from Columbia University in New York to Rice University in Texas. They come on the heels of recently completed projects at Stanford in California,…

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Paintings Get the Hollywood Treatment in Student-Curated Show at Anderson

…nderson Collection at Stanford University; Right: MGM/Photofest) “Unexpected angles reveal fresh visions of what these works were and are,” Valladares writes in the exhibition text. He describes the selections as “openly personal,” rooted in his own love of film. Pairings include Mark Rothko’s Pink and White Over Red (1957) and the fiery poster for Vincente Minelli’s 1958 drama Some Came Running. Behind dramatic illustrations of a young Shirley M…

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Getting it down on paper: A different aspect of the Anderson Collection on view

…e and color (which later would be called “color-field painting”). Her “Monotype VII” has the same energetic feeling as “Approach” upstairs. In the painting, the staining is applied sparingly, so as to create more perspective space. The monotype, however, is a joyous expanse of color punctuated by tiny flashes of white that remind one of fireworks over the ocean. Linetzky said that the second exhibition, which w…

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Free Museums’ Membership for the Class of 2020!

The Cantor Arts Center and Anderson Collection at Stanford University miss seeing you. We are eager to welcome you back to campus, share art and connect over ideas. Now through August 31, 2020, we are offering all Stanford graduates in the class of 2020 one year of free Ambassador membership ($100 value*) to both museums. Each membership covers up to two adults and children within a single household. To get your FREE membership, fill out t…

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Eamon Ore-Giron Named to Presidential Residency at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University

…hers. He also serves as assistant professor of painting and drawing at California State University, Bakersfield. The artist, who is based in L.A., will have access to the rich intellectual resources of Stanford’s campus while engaging with students, faculty and the community over the course of the fall, winter and spring quarters. The residency will culminate in an exhibition of Ore-Giron’s work in spring 2021, giving new context to objects alrea…

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Why Artist Wendy Red Star Centered Indigenous People in Her Abstracted Revision of the Iconic Manifest Destiny Painting ‘American Progress’

…t in a U.S. map printed on black vinyl, with implanted white flags representing hundreds of tribal lands. Called Their Land (2022), the map emphasizes the presence of Native tribes today, countering the misconception that Indigenous people are all but extinct. Nearby, a digital projection shows a collection of tribal seals found and researched by Stanford students. There is no consolidated repository or database for these seals of America’s over

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Stephanie Syjuco: White Balance/Color Cast | Anderson Collection at Stanford University

…identification cards, letters, portraits, ceramic fragments photographed or copied and layered together. Here is the hand of the artist again, white-gloved, placing and arranging. In the bottom left corner of Brass Bells, a group of white men and women are pictured with coffins and human skulls, the photograph layered over another of a beaded necklace against a blue backdrop, a partial view of a person posed in landscape, and a typewritten note,…