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…

…le by the modern works they viewed there–as well as at the nearby Jeu de Paume museum–they agreed on the way home to begin collecting great art. Their venture started boldly and never waned. Early acquisitions included works by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georgia O’Keeffe and Marsden Hartley. The couple, both born on the East Coast, had the wherewithal to indulge this passion; he was the co-founder of a food-se…

…(and fun) to look across to various galleries and gain unexpected views of paintings or sculptures that one can then see or revisit. I made several pilgrimages to the grouping of Bay Area Figurative artists, where I was drawn back to gaze again upon the gorgeous sky blue-gray and aquamarine vistas of Richard Diebenkorn’s “Ocean Park #60” (1973), whose seemingly translucent surface invites entrée into its maze of semi-permeable…

…movement and experimentation with materials like cardboard and silk — juxtaposing the visual properties of hard and soft 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,…

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-…

…This multi-million-dollar investment in culture is fuelled by several factors: administrators’ recognition that the arts can promote nimble thinking, student demand and donor co-operation. “Stanford made this analysis that the arts and creativity were going to be absolutely vital to the next generation of problem solvers, of people who could understand different perspectives and what it means to bring something new into the world,” says Matthew…

…rrently enrolled in a class on abstract expressionism with professor Alexander Nemerov. After multiple visits to the Anderson Collection, Valladares and Neverov approached the collection with the idea for Abstraction and the Movies. Left: Richard Diebenkorn, ‘Ocean Park #60,’ 1973. Right: Elliot Gould in ‘The Long Goodbye,’ 1973. Left: Richard Diebenkorn, ‘Ocean Park #60,’ 1973. Right: Elliot Gould in ‘The Long Goodbye,’ 1…