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.
Click here for group visits.

News

Site-specific student projects now on view!

…table art space constructed in September 2015 on-site at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve by Stanford students.  The studio was built from salvaged materials largely from scrap material available at the Jasper Ridge maintenance site. The 11 students were enrolled in David Szlasa’s Arts Intensive course “Tiny Eco Houses for Artists: Social Practice, Design/Build.” Studio 2 is a creative space for students creating and curating art at Stanford, as…

News

Anderson Collection at Stanford University announces the acquisition of two major works by Pollock, de Kooning

…at Stanford University, stands between two new acquisitions, Willem de Kooning’s Gansevoort Street (c. 1949) on the left and Jackson Pollock’s Totem Lesson I (1944) on the right. (Image credit: Farrin Abbott) “By donating two of the most sought-after New York School paintings in private hands to Stanford, Moo Anderson continued to exemplify her strong conviction that art is to be shared and to be lived,” said Stanford University President Marc…

Exhibition

Kerry Tribe

Exhibition

Sam Richardson: Islands, Ice, and Sand

About

The Building

News

Anderson Collection at Stanford University to be displayed in an elegant new home

…eached another on-schedule milestone in the trek toward beginning construction this summer and opening its doors in 2014. The Stanford Board of Trustees approved Ennead Architects‘ building design at their meeting this week. The Anderson Collection is one of the largest and most outstanding private collections of post-World War II American art in the world. The collection has been built over the last 50 years by Bay Area residents Harry W….

News

Jason Linetzky named first director of the Anderson Collection at Stanford University

…ection 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 to Stanford in 2011, is a significant mar…

News

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

…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…

News

Anderson Collection at Stanford University to Open this Month

Stanford University’s decade-long, $227-million investment in an arts initiative will be in the limelight this month with the unveiling of the Anderson Collection. One of the most valuable gifts in Stanford’s history, the collection of 20th-century American art was assembled over the course of fifty years by Bay Area collectors Harry W. “Hunk” and Mary Margaret “Moo Moo” Anderson along with their daughter Mary…

Anderson Collection at Stanford to open September 21

News

Anderson Collection pieces lock in a home at Stanford

…st, the only thing that comes close is the Hammer Museum, which was open four years before being annexed by UCLA in 1994. ‘Unquestionably world class’ “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 an…

News

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…

Stanford trustees visit new art collection, approve construction

News

‘Animating the Inanimate’: Redefining an art form

…oft materials. By playing around with 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 eng…

News

The Do List: Cy and David’s Picks

…ay Wisely play the authors in this new production. It’s not really a romantic tale. Sand was 20 years older, and they never met. But director Joy Carlin told me audiences are loving it. “It seems to pack a wallop, it’s just people reading letters, but people seem to get very emotional over it.” Details here. Robert Hawkins entertains the Comedy Day audience (Photo: Dan Dion/Comedy Day) Sept 18: Comedy Day is back in Golden Gate Park. This free…

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

The audience for Nick Cave’s Soundsuits isn’t really the audience. To put it another way, people looking at the artist’s tall, bright, faceless garments from the outside are part of the audience. But another important audience member is the one wearing a Soundsuit: the person inside. Although visitors to the new exhibition can’t try on the suits, seeing them in person is just as good and not quite as tricky. At the two-…

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Fashion statements: Nick Cave’s Soundsuits come to Stanford

…ns. Each item he finds holds a story — the energetic imprint from every previous owner, which he assembles into his Soundsuits. In that way, it can be said that Soundsuits are formed from memories. The Chicago artist’s creations are part sculpture and ornament, armor and instrument and are often worn as costumes and performed in. The energetic vibration of each single, insignificant article is magnified by how Cave chooses to bind the…

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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,…

News

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

If you’d been dragging your feet on getting to Palo Alto for the Anderson Collection’s Nick Cave exhibition (of Soundsuits, not Bad Seeds fame), now is the time. In addition to person-sized sculptures made for shimmying, the free collection displays Abstraction and the Movies March 1-17 only. Curated by current Stanford undergrad Carlos Valladares, Abstraction and the Movies pairs works from the Anderson Collection with images and posters from f…