Campus Stories - Art & Art History
Stanford students take listeners on a voyage of discovery
While studying “sky burials” in Mongolia, Reade Levinson amassed 20 hours of recordings, including interviews with Tibetan Buddhist lamas, conservation biologists and vulture experts, and the sound of dogs barking, monks praying and cars honking. Levinson, a senior majoring in Earth systems, spent last summer researching the funeral practice, in which monks place corpses –…
Happy 2016!
With the opening of the McMurtry Building, the new home for the Department of Art & Art History, we reached a milestone in the university’s ongoing commitment to building programs, curricula, and resources in the arts. The new building provides an architecturally exciting and inspiring home for the department, allowing it to expand its programmatic…
Cantor Arts Center digitizes collection for online database
Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center has completed a 6-year project to make its collection accessible online. Students, faculty, scholars and the general public can now visit the museum’s website, type in a title, artist, theme or other search criteria, and see high-quality digital images of the majority of the 45,000-plus objects in the collection. Partial inventories…
Stanford photography instructor’s work in national spotlight
ROBERT DAWSON, instructor of photography in the Department of Art & Art History, spent 21 years photographing public libraries across the United States. Now, his photos will get a national spotlight. The Library of Congress recently announced the acquisition of Dawson’s entire archive from the project “Public Library: An American Commons.” The archive, acquired through…
In the Conservation Lab of Stanford University Libraries, every story has a happy ending
Each story begins with the arrival of a university treasure – a rare book, map, serial or manuscript that needs repair, or a one-of-a-kind object that needs a custom-made box. Like all artisans, Stanford’s conservators have a deep appreciation and respect for precious objects rare to modern, from a first edition On the Origin of…
New Stanford exhibition highlights power of reinterpretation, consultation with Native American communities
In the late 1890s, the entrepreneur and former lieutenant governor of California, John R. Daggett, assembled an ethnographic collection of objects to illustrate the lives of Hupa, Karuk and Yurok communities in Northern California. Earlier he had served as commissioner for California’s pavilion at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where exhibits showcased material…
“Comma And…”
Last winter quarter, Stanford undergraduate students in any discipline or major were invited to submit new work for the Department of Art & Art History’s second annual undergraduate juried art exhibition titled Comma And… . After much discussion and deliberation, a jury whittled down the selections and made their final recommendations of 27 works from 20 students….
Stanford’s Anderson Collection building wins prestigious architecture award
The Anderson Collection at Stanford University has won a 2015 Award of Excellence, the highest level of honor, from the American Institute of Architects, New York State (AIANY). Designed by RICHARD OLCOTT/Ennead Architects, the building housing the collection is located in the heart of Stanford’s arts district. The Anderson Collection at Stanford University celebrates its first anniversary…
New home of the Stanford Department of Art & Art History is an adventure
“Wow” is an apt way to describe the student and community response to the new home of the Department of Art & Art History in Stanford’s arts district. The McMurtry Building was completed over the summer, opening for instruction and art-making on the first day of the fall term. Since then, students have explored 100,000…
Stanford’s newest building spotlights art and art history
On Oct. 6, Stanford Board of Trustees Chair Steven Denning formally accepted the McMurtry Building for theDepartment of Art & Art History. It is the first new building to open this academic year. The building dedication was one of several celebratory events on Tuesday. The McMurtry Building at Stanford University, the new home of the Department…
McMurtry Building for Art & Art History
Stanford’s McMurtry Building for the arts provides unified facilities for art history, art practice and film programs. Diller Scofidio + Renfro, along with the executive architect, Portland, OR-based Boora Architects, designed not only a new home for the Department of Art and Art History but an interdisciplinary hub for the arts at Stanford that is…
Welcome back!
The big news this year is the opening of the McMurtry Building for the Department of Art & Art History! This incredible new home for all the department’s programs marks the third new facility in our arts district following Bing Concert Hall (2013) and the Anderson Collection at Stanford University (2014). The first exhibition in…
Dry-5: Stories from the California Drought
Two Stanford alums and an undergraduate walk into a bar… Actually, they aren’t in a bar; they are on stage putting on a show about the California drought. So no drinks, but there is plenty of talk of being parched. The alumnae are MARI AMEND and DORIA CHARLSON, both of the Class of ’13, who…
Obituary: John Henry Merryman
It’s often said that the faculty makes a school. In the case of John Henry Merryman, one individual’s influence on Stanford went well beyond the classroom and the launch of a new field of law to the very art on the walls and sculptures on the grounds. An internationally renowned expert on art and cultural…
Stanford conservators work to preserve Rodin Sculpture Garden
With dust, UV light radiation and acid rain to contend with, it’s difficult to keep outdoor works of art in their original, intended condition. To help fend off corrosion, the Rodin Sculpture Garden, next to the Cantor Arts Center, is in the middle of its annual conservation work. Conservators first wash the sculptures, then apply…
