Campus Stories - Art & Art History
Q&A with curator Elizabeth Mitchell on gifts to the Cantor
Elizabeth Mitchell, Burton and Deedee McMurtry Curator and director of the Curatorial Fellowship Program at the Cantor Arts Center, discusses the Capital Group Foundation’s gift of 1,000 photographs and the 12 prints, drawings, and photographs given by Stanford alumna Marilyn F. Symmes (BA, ’71). Q: Can you talk about the importance of gifts like…
Stanford alumna Marilyn F. Symmes (BA, ’71) gives prints, drawings, and photographs to the Cantor
The Cantor Arts Center recently acquired 12 prints, drawings, and photographs given by Stanford alumna Marilyn F. Symmes (BA, ’71). The New York–based curator and art historian is honoring her Stanford roots while recognizing the importance of student interactions with objects. The gift features an eclectic selection of works ranging from an Italian Renaissance portrait…
Reflection on Stephanie Syjuco’s I Am An . . .
Stephanie Syjuco’s I Am An . . . is a 20-foot-long black banner that is suspended from the ceiling of the Cantor’s marbled gray entry hall, announcing in block letters: I AM AN AMERICAN. The banner is displayed partially closed to intentionally distort the white letters that read “AMERICAN,” suggesting a garbled reading of the…
The Medium Is the Message: Art since 1950
“It is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action,” wrote Marshall McLuhan. Using works created since 1950, this reinstallation of the Cantor’s permanent collection of contemporary art explores the relationship between subject, content, and the materials that informed each object’s production. In 1964, Canadian media theorist Marshall…
Anne Shulock named assistant vice president for the arts
Anne Shulock, chief of staff in the Office of the President of the San Francisco Art Institute, has been appointed the assistant vice president for the arts at Stanford University. As the assistant vice president for the arts, Shulock will help to further implement a cohesive 21st-century vision for the arts at Stanford. Reporting to…
New art project brings Stanford students and incarcerated artists together
A sculpture of a surfer riding a rainbow wave, a black-and-white comic strip about friendship and paintings of children’s toys are some of the artworks created as part of a new collaboration between Stanford students and incarcerated artists as a way of connecting the public and people in prison together through art. Stanford seniors Michelle…
artsCatalyst Grants 2018-19
This past academic year, the Office of the Vice President for the Arts awarded 27 artsCatalyst Grants to faculty members from across the University. These grants foster arts experiences that enhance classroom experiences for undergraduate students. Activities included field trips to Bay Area cultural organizations, workshops with visiting artists, and attending performances. 2018-19 artsCatalyst Grant Recipients Interpreting Art (ITALIC 92), Karla…
Student Arts Grants: A Year in Photos 2018-19
vvcThis year’s Student Arts Grants supported a wide range of projects across the Stanford campus. The projects covered many genres including contemporary plays, documentary and fiction film shorts, musical theater, zines, photography, sculpture, and more. Many of this year’s grantees utilized Roble Arts Gym as a rehearsal/work space as well as a venue for their exhibits and…
Stanford students help each other prepare for a career in the art world
After recognizing that there was not anything like it on campus, two Stanford students have founded a student arts organization with a dual mission: to strengthen the arts community on campus and to provide students potential career pathways in the arts. Established in 2017 by art history coterms Reilly Clark and Reily Haag, the Professional…
Measurements: Similar, accurate, truthful
May 20 also marks the debut of a new book on the history of measurement by Emanuele Lugli, assistant professor of art and art history at the School of Humanities and Sciences. The Making of Measure and the Promise of Sameness (University of Chicago Press) is a quest for the foundations of objectivity through an analysis of the…
Student photographs that are worth a 1000 words
The results are in for the 8th annual Stanford Global Studies Student Photo Contest, and the winner of the popular vote is an evocative image of a rainy day at the Taj Mahal captured by senior human biology major EMILY MENDONSA while she was traveling in Utter Pradesh, India, conducting research on women’s health in an overseas…
Sally Fairchild painting comes home to the Cantor
This month, the striking painting Sally Fairchild (1884–87) by John Singer Sargent is back on display at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, after a three-month stay in Stockholm, Sweden, as part of a major retrospective of the artist’s work. But returning the painting to the Farm was no easy task for Elizabeth K….
Spring quarter 2019 guest artists
Over 30 departments, centers and campus organizations host guest artists each quarter. The Architectural Design Program and the University Architect/Campus Planning and Design Office co-present the annual Architecture & Landscape–Spring Lecture Series, and the theme this year is “Architecture of Humanity.” The series features five designers who believe architecture has a much greater responsibility beyond aesthetics….
Cantor Arts Center receives collection of over 1,000 photographs by American artists
The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University has received a gift of more than 1,000 photographs, including works by American photographers Ansel Adams, Edward Curtis, John Gutmann, Helen Levitt, Wright Morris, Gordon Parks and Edward Weston. The gift from the Capital Group Foundation includes $2 million to endow a named curatorial fellow position and support…
First West Coast exhibition of monumental installation melds art and science at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center
A new exhibit at the Cantor Arts Center invites viewers to imagine not just one universe, but many. Working at the unexpected intersection of physics, art and the history of modernism, Josiah McElheny’s monumental installation Island Universe, on view through August 18, 2019, envisions an infinite, multiverse scenario, where five separate universes occupy the same…
Artist Dana Schutz on campus Mar. 4, 2019
Dana Schutz (b. 1976, Livonia, Michigan) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her paintings depict darkly humorous narratives, hypothetical situations and impossible physical feats, such as swimming while smoking and crying or a manically refracted self- exam. Vibrant and tactile, Schutz’s oddly compelling images simultaneously engage the unique capabilities of the medium while conjuring…
