Campus Stories - Art & Art History
Stanford’s McMurtry Building is the third new arts building in as many years
Since hatching the idea of a university arts district in 2007, Stanford has delivered two of three new buildings to join Cantor Arts Center and Frost Amphitheater in a concentration of arts spaces on either side of the Palm Drive entrance to campus. The Bing Concert Hall has already hosted more than 150 performances since…
Stanford art historian uncovers commodity culture in Mondrian’s legacy
From Yves St. Laurent’s famed shift dresses to hotel décor, furniture and even jigsaw puzzles, among other “Mondriana,” Dutch artist Piet Mondrian’s imagery has become ubiquitous in consumer culture. Best known for geometric abstract paintings with asymmetrical arrangements of rectangles in primary colors (red, yellow and blue) as well as black, white and gray, Mondrian…
Time Out
The third annual Frost Music and Arts Festival took place on Saturday, May 17. On stage, campus-based mash-up Paper Void joined psychedelic pop band Yeasayer as opening acts for the indie group Dispatch. The festival took place in mid-quarter 2014—right in the middle of exams and papers. But the experience was an afternoon out of…
Stanford showcases Carleton Watkins’ landscape photographs of the American West
For the fantasy dinner party that one would plan in celebration of Carleton Watkins’ exhibition at Cantor Arts Center, you would start with Watkins at the head of the table. Add special guests President Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Yosemite Valley Grant Act in 1864 based on Watkins’ photographs; Leland Stanford, who was governor of…
Contemporary artwork in spotlight at Stanford’s engineering, science buildings
DeWitt Cheng, a 1971 Stanford alumnus, recently took over the Stanford Art Spaces program, which has been in existence nearly 30 years. He sat down with Stanford Report to talk about the history and future of the program and how he thinks about artwork in non-traditional exhibition spaces. How did Stanford Art Spaces come to…
Paper Void, Yeasayer open for veteran indie band Dispatch at Stanford’s Frost Amphitheater
The third annual Frost Music and Arts Festival this Saturday, May 17, features three bands, a fleet of food trucks and several art installations created in Michael Sturtz’s d.school class specifically for the festival. The musical lineup at Frost Amphitheater starts with campus-local Paper Void, followed by Yeasayer and finally Dispatch. Tickets are on sale…
Seniors
On April 23 the senior class put on the second annual Senior Arts Gala in Bing Concert Hall. This new Stanford tradition is a great occasion. The students get a chance to celebrate their time at Stanford, take a step into the next phase of their lives (with a very sophisticated cocktail party)—and enjoy the…
Stanford inaugurates new academic arts program in Washington, D.C.
After meeting Kale Futterman, an arts practice major at Stanford, the chief curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., entrusted her with an important task – writing short art history essays, known as “wall text,” to mount next to some of the gallery’s paintings. Futterman created wall text for artists ranging from…
Stanford alumnus Josh Haner wins Pulitzer Prize for photography
Josh Haner ’02, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography, almost didn’t accept the assignment that would ultimately earn him that prize. In fact, the first time he was offered the assignment, he politely declined. Haner was at The New York Times’ offices, where he was a photographer, celebrating with one of his…
Stanford photography instructor Robert Dawson named Guggenheim Fellow
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has named three Stanford faculty members Guggenheim Fellows: ROBERT DAWSON for photography, JONATHAN LEVIN for economics and MONIKA PIAZZESI for economics. “It’s exciting to name 178 new Guggenheim Fellows,” Edward Hirsch, foundation president, said in a press release. “These artists and writers, scholars and scientists, represent the best of…
Cantor Arts Center presents an exhibition in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Yosemite Grant
As the nation celebrates the 150th anniversary of the Yosemite Grant, Cantor Arts Center presents an exhibition featuring more than 80 original mammoth prints from three unique albums of Carleton Watkins’s work: Photographs of the Yosemite Valley (1861 and 1865–66), Photographs of the Pacific Coast (1862–76), and Photographs of the Columbia River and Oregon (1867…
Rodin’s hand sculptures diagnosed as part of exhibit
One of the sculptures has been “repaired” using virtual surgery by the techies in the school’s Division of Clinical Anatomy. And with the help of more digital wizardry, viewers can see virtual blood and bone in the bronze hands. Inside Rodin’s Hands: Art, Technology and Surgery, which runs April 9 through Aug. 3 at Stanford’s…
Stanford exhibit spotlights medieval ‘world of words’
Open a book, and you discover a whole new world – especially if that book is several centuries old. That is the case with The Circle of the Sun, a new Stanford University Libraries exhibit on display through June 14 in the Peterson Gallery and Munger Rotunda of Green Library. It features the secular works…
Stanford lecturer and artist leads ‘drawing orchestra’ through assembly of frustrated icosahedron to strains of Vivaldi
Before the full Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra takes the stage tonight at Bing Concert Hall to perform Antonio Vivaldi’s oratorio Juditha triumphans, four of its members will participate in something completely different. Stanford design lecturer and artist Pamela Davis Kivelson will lead her Drawing Orchestra, accompanied by the PBO foursome, in a choreographed construction performance titled…
Immersion
Eighteen lucky students went to museums, galleries and performances. They danced with members of the Mark Morris Dance Group, met with art experts at Christie’s, attended a rehearsal of the New York Philharmonic—and much, much more. Throughout the week, students gathered their thoughts and impressions about the trip on tumblr. The students were participating in…
