Campus Stories - Art & Art History
Summer Plans
It’s June, which means the campus is preparing for Commencement: The fountains are being coaxed out of hibernation, student prizes are being awarded, and the now-annual Senior Arts Gala is taking place at Bing Concert Hall. This year’s gala promises a showcase of some of the most talented performing and visual artists of the Class…
Roble Gym makeover includes new arts gym
Roble Gym makeover includes new arts gym Project on schedule to open in fall 2016. In June 2014, Stanford trustees approved plans to renovate Roble Gym, which was built in 1931 as a women’s gym and health center. Roble Gym will house the Department of Theater & Performance Studies (TAPS) Division of Dance and the…
Unexpected intersections
Far-flung collaborations flourish at Stanford: Physicists create dance performances, biologists and musicians expand our understanding of epilepsy, and engineers speed environmental research. This interdisciplinary environment springs from having strong science and humanities departments adjacent to a thriving arts district and is aided by research institutes that cross school and department lines. These collaborations blur traditional…
Five-year digitization and inventory project at Cantor nears the finish line
It has been picture day at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center five days a week for five years. Thousands of objects have posed for the camera in order to be included in an online database. The massive digitization and inventory project serves multiple purposes: access for students, faculty and other scholars; a clear assessment of what…
Cantor wins prestigious media and technology award
Stanford, Calif., May 8, 2015 — The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University earned a 2015 Gold Muse Award from the American Alliance of Museums’ Media and Technology Professional Network. The Cantor won the Honeysett and Din Award for TandemArt, a software application created by recent Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) students Renee Bruner…
First student cohort chosen for Stanford in New York
Stanford has chosen the first cohort of 20 undergraduate students for Stanford in New York, established a home for the pilot program in a Manhattan high-rise, and signed an agreement with a student residence hall in Brooklyn. In addition, Stanford has created a suite of courses tailored to the program’s focus and location, including “Divided…
Undergrads explore the power of storytelling with audio documentaries
“I am seeking stories from accidental explorers of non-traditional realities, spiritual dimensions, labyrinths, mazes and enchanted-else-wheres.” So began a call for stories issued by Stanford senior Mischa Shoni, as part of a radio project she produced with the support of a Braden Storytelling Grant. Winners of the grant are awarded up to $3,000 to research…
Poet, musician, scientist
Rob Jackson occasionally picks up the guitar that sits in the corner of his office and strums it to help organize his thoughts. It also helps him get through particularly long teleconferences. “There can be 25 people on a telecon and you might speak once in an hour. So occasionally I put my phone on…
Cantor Arts Center presents solo exhibition of Jacob Lawrence’s work, “Promised Land”
One of the largest collections of works by American artist Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000) in any museum belongs to the Cantor Arts Center, and it goes on view for the first time April 1. Lawrence is an acclaimed figurative painter of the 20th century and a leading voice in the artistic portrayal of the African American…
Campus engagement at the Cantor Arts Center
Two large exhibitions engage faculty, students and campus partners from multiple disciplines. She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World (closing May 4) This exhibition features the pioneering work of 12 leading women photographers from Iran and the Arab world. Through partnerships with the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the…
Honing the art of observation, and observing art
The scene: A group of medical students huddled around the iconic Robert Frank photograph, Car Accident — U.S. 66, Between Winslow and Flagstaff, Arizona, at Stanford’s Cantor Center for the Visual Arts. Sarah Naftalis, who’s studying for a PhD in art history at Stanford, led the students through an exercise: She asked them what they…
In her research and in a new online course, Stanford scholar delves into the secrets of medieval texts
Most people don’t realize that medieval manuscripts carry in them not only the words of people centuries ago, but also a history in blood, sweat and tears – quite literally. Take the 13th-century British tome that did double duty as an impromptu shield for a hapless monk when the Vikings attacked his monastery. Bloodstains that…
Wax works by local artists
Stanford Art Spaces announces its January-February 2015 art exhibitions: The Spiritual Landscape by Mari Marks and One Day at a Time: Thirty Years in the Studio by Howard Hersh. Both are accomplished Bay Area artists: Marks lives in Berkeley, and Hersh in San Francisco. Both employ the medium of encaustic, i.e., powdered pigments bound in…
Blooming Fibonacci
These 3-D printed sculptures, called blooms, are designed to animate when spun under a strobe light. The placement of the appendages is determined by the same method nature uses in pinecones and sunflowers. The rotation speed is synchronized to the strobe so that one flash occurs every time the sculpture turns 137.5º – the golden…
Architect David Adjaye tells Stanford audience how he designs civic spaces to create community
Architect David Adjaye is international both in his heritage and in his career. Between his childhood and his working life he has spent considerable time in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the United States. He has built houses for Kofi Annan and, pro bono, for displaced residents of New Orleans’ Ninth Ward; he also…
Happy 2015!
We are looking forward to everything 2015 will bring in the arts at Stanford – new exhibitions at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford Live performances at Bing Concert Hall and beyond, engagement with the Anderson Collection at Stanford University – and of course the enormous variety of performances, events, exhibitions and programs put on by…
