Campus Stories - Art & Art History
New maps showcase public art treasures on Stanford campus
While the Burghers of Calais is a favorite stop for visitors who pose for photos with Auguste Rodin’s larger-than-life bronze statues in Memorial Court, there are dozens of other public art treasures all over the Stanford campus awaiting visits from art lovers. Strolling across campus, students, faculty, staff and visitors can encounter art at almost…
Fruit bats on the clothesline
From across the room it catches my eye immediately, hundreds of 16-inch fiberglass figures dangling from a spidery, umbrella-shaped clothesline. As I approach, I realize that they’re flying foxes—big-eyed, pointy-eared fruit bats of the type I’ve seen fluttering overhead in the evening. I happen to love bats, and these particular sculptures are stunning in their…
Introducing the Interdisciplinary Honors in the Arts Program
The Stanford Arts Institute is bringing to Stanford’s campus a program unlike any other. Meet the Interdisciplinary Honors Program, Honors in the Arts, which provides an opportunity for students of any major to complete a capstone project that brings a student’s experience in another discipline together with artistic endeavor. Conceived by Executive Director of Arts…
Jason Linetzky named first director of the 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 Rapture
The enormously entertaining exhibition of 45 color images is an unexpected surprise and deviation from Leivick’s past work, which has generally been characterized by large format landscape prints in black and white. While in Italy last autumn as a 2012 Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome, Leivick had planned a project involving beachfront…
Stanford postdoctoral scholars get into the act of art
Under the watchful gaze of Nathan Oliveira’s Universal Woman in the Lorry I. Lokey Stem Cell Research Building are 12 works of art informally displayed on easels. This pop-up installation is the brainchild of the art committee of the Stanford University Postdoctoral Association, and it won’t be the last. Recognizing that postdoctoral scholars do not have an outlet…
Can’t resist touching the art? These Stanford students scrub the ‘Gates of Hell’
Somebody has got to keep the Gates of Hell safe from the elements. Meet the students on Stanford’s outdoor sculpture preservation crew. They conduct preventative maintenance on Rodin’s Gates of Hell and 100 other outdoor sculptures across campus. In other words, they get lots of hands-on-the-art experience because they have permission to touch. Given the nature of their work,…
Stanford Arts Institute to pilot new interdisciplinary honors program
The Stanford Arts Institute will pilot a new interdisciplinary honors program in the arts during the 2013-14 academic year, an initiative intended to appeal to arts and non-arts majors alike. Students admitted to the program will participate in small workshops throughout their senior year while working towards the completion of a capstone project that reflects…
Through photos and memorabilia, Stanford’s Allen Ginsberg collection captures a generation
Allen Ginsberg, the iconic figurehead of the Beat Generation, saved just about everything. Ginsberg’s vast array of memorabilia housed in the Stanford University Libraries’ Department of Special Collections proves that he was not just an observer of culture, but also a collector of culture. Bill Morgan, Ginsberg’s personal archivist, bibliographer and biographer, told a Stanford…
Hoover Library and Archives brings out its art to illustrate history
Archives are often pictured as rooms full of dusty books and documents – a place only for historians. The Hoover Institution is proving that theory wrong with its latest exhibit, Art and History: Treasures from the Hoover Library and Archives. Presenting history in all its many shades, the exhibit showcases a wide range of items from…
Cantor Arts Center’s French summer
Never mind that King Francois I of France pre-dated Bastille Day by more than 200 years. The sophisticated and extravagant School of Fontainebleau style that developed under his royal command is something to celebrate and see during the month of France’s La Fête Nationale. Francois’ 16th-century prints, le quatorze juillet, on view through Sunday, are part of…
Matt Kahn, pioneer in design coursework and Stanford professor emeritus, dies
Stanford Professor Emeritus Matt Kahn died at his Stanford home on June 24. He was 85. Kahn was born on May 29, 1928, in New York City, the son of Jess and Julia Kahn. He studied at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., where he met Lyda Weyl, his wife and partner in…
Art slideshow from the Frost Music and Arts Festival
The Frost concert planning team organized an arts component at this year’s Frost concert that gave the event a festival vibe. Festival art directors and undergraduates Alberto Aroeste, Max Oswald and Danny Smith were the visionaries behind the art installations. The objective was to make the art experiential rather than static. Success! Click here to…
Saints and Manet at the Cantor starting June 12
Faith Embodied: Saints from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment June 12–November 17, 2013 Gallery for Early European Art The 16 prints in this exhibition explore different narrative strategies that artists employed to represent the deeds, miraculous visions, and martyrdoms of the saints. The works also demonstrate how the depiction of saints varied, from simple images…
Artwork inspired by MRI brain scans installed at Stanford imaging center
Art and science meet in a new installation of clay sculptures, etchings and acrylics at the Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging. The pieces by artist Laura Jacobson, a Stanford alumna, are inspired by MRIs of the human brain and reflect the work of the center to investigate connections between neuroscience and society. The center,…
The Chair – June 6-30
See eleven unique and beautiful chairs designed by students enrolled in ARTSTUDI 262, The Chair, taught by John Edmark. Each chairs’ design and fabrication was informed by historical reference, anthropometrics, form studies, intensive user testing and materials investigations. Meet the Stanford students who designed and fabricated the chairs at the opening reception on June 6…
