Stanford’s art museums present new digital teaching resources

Each year hundreds of classes and thousands of students and scholars from across campus rely on the Cantor Arts Center and Anderson Collection at Stanford University for access to the art, artists and ideas comprising more than 40,000 objects in the museums’ collections. Though there is no substitute for experiencing art in person, the Cantor and Anderson Collection are making available a host of new digital resources to continue their essential role in supporting the academic community while courses are online.

“Learning From Home” is a web portal that aggregates research and teaching materials that can easily be integrated in Canvas and other remote learning platforms. The first phase of the site was launched May 19. It includes:

• Thematic portfolios containing digital images selected from the collections and organized by movement, artist, medium or relation to recent exhibitions
• Newly digitized publications about the museums’ collections, including catalogues for The Art of Jacob Lawrenceand Left of Center, and gallery guides for The Melancholy Museum and spring 2020 student-led exhibitions about authenticity in art and cultural exchanges between the Safavid Empire in Persia and Europe
• Contact information for expanded museum services in support of student research, virtual class visits, assignment collaboration, curricular consultations and the delivery of high-resolution digital images

Additional content will be added to Learning From Home in upcoming weeks and will continue through the summer and fall quarters. Video content from curators, including close looks at individual works of art in the collections, are expected in early June.

This latest initiative augments more than 20,000 images in the public domain accessible for download through the Cantor’s website and “Museums From Home,” a digest of online exhibitions, archives, recorded lectures, oral histories, art-making activities and tools – including virtual backgrounds and simulated jigsaw puzzles – released by the art museums for the broader community in March. The museums’ digital doors are always open, and visitors are invited to check back regularly for original content and updates.