Campus Stories - Art & Art History
Art in the Metropolis
“Art in the Metropolis” is a sophomore seminar offered in conjunction with the annual “Arts Immersion” trip to New York that takes place over spring break and is organized by the Stanford Arts Institute. The trip, now in its fourth year, provides a group of students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the cultural…
Stanford exhibit of San Jose’s lost Chinatown brings archaeology out of the laboratory
Visitors to the Stanford Archaeology Center find modern glass cases filled with fragments of a lost city – wooden toothbrushes and combs, buttons and leather shoes, ceramic bowls and soup spoons. These are the remnants of the once thriving Chinatown community in downtown San José. Today, these archaeological findings populate City Beneath the City, an art installation designed by…
Possessed by Place
Photographer Binh Danh, the son of refugees from Vietnam, has long been fascinated with the interplay of place and personal identity. About three years ago, he felt ready to tackle a landscape which he had dreamed about since he was a California schoolboy: Yosemite National Park. Danh, MFA ’04, a master of alternative photographic processes,…
Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center draws kids in with new family program
There’s a new pitter-patter at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford. Scurrying between the sculptures, popping by the portraits and musing at the masks are groups of children, taking part in a new program that has them drawing and sketching in the shadow of the masters. The Cantor has always welcomed families but the new program, on Sunday…
Public Discourse: Photographs by Robert Dawson
Robert Dawson has long been interested in how photography can be used to understand our relationship with the environment and in photography’s ability to shape public awareness and understanding of complex issues surrounding water, land use and our shared commons. Public Discourse: Photographs by Robert Dawson features work spanning 30 years of his career. The photographs…
Stanford student explores the arts way off campus
Massive public murals typically aren’t the first image that comes to mind when the city of Lyon is mentioned. Located in east-central France between two major rivers, the Rhône and the Saône, Lyon is renowned for its Renaissance architecture, silk production and a plethora of local sausage specialties (calf’s feet anyone?). Yet a lesser-known gem…
Stanford Arts Institute funds student works
An exhibit of vinyl prints in the Cummings Art Building lobby, a Toyon performance of a student composition for violin and viola, the Cantor Arts Center’s annual Party on the Edge– all owe their existence to student arts grants given out quarterly through the Stanford Arts Institute. This winter, 76 students submitted applications for grants,…
Windhover Contemplative Center to Break Ground in June
The university will break ground after Commencement on a new center for contemplation and reflection adjacent to the Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden at the corner of Santa Teresa Street and Lomita Mall. The one-story, 4,000-square-foot Windhover Contemplative Center has been on the university’s construction agenda for about 15 years. The estimated $5.3 million project…
The Stanford Arts Timeline unearths a vital legacy of tradition and transformation
On Friday, January 11, 2013 – nearly 121 years after Stanford convened its first class – Bing Concert Hall opened its doors. A culminating event for years of curricular and extracurricular arts activity on campus, this exciting moment has deep roots in over a century of Stanford arts – from one department focused on applied…
Finely Tuned
With the right lighting, the sturdy, fez-shaped building appears like something from another world, an outlier amid the sandstone-and-tiled architecture that dominates the Stanford landscape. And it would not be hyperbole to say there has never been anything like it on the Farm. After decades of yearning for a world-class performing arts venue, years of planning…
City Beneath the City @ Stanford Archaeology Center
City Beneath the City opens on January 11, 2013, at the Stanford Archaeology Center. The exhibition consists of artistic displays of artifacts from San Jose’s first Chinese community, the Market Street Chinatown, which was destroyed in an arson fire on May 4, 1887. Through artist Rene Yung’s sensitive design, City Beneath the City explores the…
The Jameel Prize: Art Inspired by Islamic Tradition
On view for the first time in the United States, “The Jameel Prize: Art Inspired by Islamic Tradition” opens December 12 at Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center. This special exhibition presents the work of 10 artists selected as finalists for the prestigious Jameel Prize, an international award bestowed by the Victoria and Albert Museum in…
Last events of 2012
Dec. 12 6:45 pm | LASER (Leonardo Arts/Science Evening Rendezvous) The LASER series provides a snapshot of the region’s cultural environment and fosters interdisciplinary networking. Each evening presents four artists, scientists, philosophers, historians, inventors, scholars who are working on paradigm shifts. Dec. 12 speakers include: Jennifer Parker (UC Santa Cruz) presenting works created by artists and…
MURAL ARTIST CREATES A SPACE FOR STUDENTS TO CELEBRATE THEIR IDENTITIES AS LATIN AMERICANS, AND STUDENT RESPONDS WITH POETRY
On Nov. 9, Stanford inaugurated its newest mural The Spiral Word: El Codex Estánfor at El Centro Chicano. The mural was designed and created by Berkeley-based international muralist Juana Alicia. The artist was on hand at the ceremony to give a blessing, talk about her work and officially turn the murals over to the community. The…
Cuba 2012: American Photographers in Havana
North Americans who know Cuba only from Hollywood movies and familiarity with Cuban artists are guilty of mainland insularity, a product of Cold War tensions that have lingered for over 50 years. It is now possible, however, for U.S. citizens to travel to that nominally Communist state, a tourist destination in the pre-revolutionary past (and…
Christian Marclay’s Video Quartet
Across a bank of four screens, Maria Callas, Jimi Hendrix, Marilyn Monroe and scores of other musicians and actors make some kind of sound, seemingly in response to each other—much like players in a musical ensemble. This is Christian Marclay’s “Video Quartet,” a publicly and critically acclaimed 14-minute DVD projection, on view November 14 through…
