Campus Stories - Posts
Cantor Arts Center digitizes collection for online database
Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center has completed a 6-year project to make its collection accessible online. Students, faculty, scholars and the general public can now visit the museum’s website, type in a title, artist, theme or other search criteria, and see high-quality digital images of the majority of the 45,000-plus objects in the collection. Partial inventories…
Filmmaker Mira Nair shares the art of portraying the complexities of South Asia
“Nothing prepared me for the extraordinary hospitality, but also the ancient and deeply modern culture that I was in front of,” MIRA NAIR recalled thinking during her first trip to Lahore, Pakistan. “And that is what led me to make a film about Pakistan.” Nair, a renowned Indian filmmaker, was speaking at a film screening…
Stanford photography instructor’s work in national spotlight
ROBERT DAWSON, instructor of photography in the Department of Art & Art History, spent 21 years photographing public libraries across the United States. Now, his photos will get a national spotlight. The Library of Congress recently announced the acquisition of Dawson’s entire archive from the project “Public Library: An American Commons.” The archive, acquired through…
In the Conservation Lab of Stanford University Libraries, every story has a happy ending
Each story begins with the arrival of a university treasure – a rare book, map, serial or manuscript that needs repair, or a one-of-a-kind object that needs a custom-made box. Like all artisans, Stanford’s conservators have a deep appreciation and respect for precious objects rare to modern, from a first edition On the Origin of…
New Stanford exhibition highlights power of reinterpretation, consultation with Native American communities
In the late 1890s, the entrepreneur and former lieutenant governor of California, John R. Daggett, assembled an ethnographic collection of objects to illustrate the lives of Hupa, Karuk and Yurok communities in Northern California. Earlier he had served as commissioner for California’s pavilion at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where exhibits showcased material…
Anna Deavere Smith talks about the healing power of stories
On Oct. 28, hundreds gathered at Memorial Auditorium for a night of storytelling and conversation with former Stanford faculty member Anna Deavere Smith, an award-winning pioneer in the field of documentary theater. Smith is best known for her one-woman, multi-character performances, which depict people reflecting on moments of intense catastrophe. Her plays range in dramatic…
Stanford scholars spy history of capitalist culture in Bond film songs
In the lead-up to Spectre, the latest film in the decades-long James Bond spy thriller franchise opening this week, much of the recent buzz has centered on another long-running 007 tradition – the title song. Amidst all the speculation about who would sing the new Bond song, Stanford scholars Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold wrote…
Sounds of the sea
Every fall Chris Chafe, professor of music and director of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), takes students from Music 220A out on the high seas to record sound. In October 2015, 30 students chewed a bit of ginger and headed out for the day to dangle their self-built hydrophones over…
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“Comma And…”
Last winter quarter, Stanford undergraduate students in any discipline or major were invited to submit new work for the Department of Art & Art History’s second annual undergraduate juried art exhibition titled Comma And… . After much discussion and deliberation, a jury whittled down the selections and made their final recommendations of 27 works from 20 students….
Stanford’s Anderson Collection building wins prestigious architecture award
The Anderson Collection at Stanford University has won a 2015 Award of Excellence, the highest level of honor, from the American Institute of Architects, New York State (AIANY). Designed by RICHARD OLCOTT/Ennead Architects, the building housing the collection is located in the heart of Stanford’s arts district. The Anderson Collection at Stanford University celebrates its first anniversary…
Recording produced at Bing Concert Hall makes first step toward Grammy nomination
The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences announced that the recording of Joseph Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass (Nelsonmesse) and Symphony No. 102 performed by the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Stanford Chamber Strings and Stanford Chamber Chorale in Bing Concert Hall has qualified for the first-round ballot in four Grammy categories: Best Choral Performance, Best Chamber Music/Small…
New home of the Stanford Department of Art & Art History is an adventure
“Wow” is an apt way to describe the student and community response to the new home of the Department of Art & Art History in Stanford’s arts district. The McMurtry Building was completed over the summer, opening for instruction and art-making on the first day of the fall term. Since then, students have explored 100,000…
Stanford’s newest building spotlights art and art history
On Oct. 6, Stanford Board of Trustees Chair Steven Denning formally accepted the McMurtry Building for theDepartment of Art & Art History. It is the first new building to open this academic year. The building dedication was one of several celebratory events on Tuesday. The McMurtry Building at Stanford University, the new home of the Department…
McMurtry Building for Art & Art History
Stanford’s McMurtry Building for the arts provides unified facilities for art history, art practice and film programs. Diller Scofidio + Renfro, along with the executive architect, Portland, OR-based Boora Architects, designed not only a new home for the Department of Art and Art History but an interdisciplinary hub for the arts at Stanford that is…
Welcome back!
The big news this year is the opening of the McMurtry Building for the Department of Art & Art History! This incredible new home for all the department’s programs marks the third new facility in our arts district following Bing Concert Hall (2013) and the Anderson Collection at Stanford University (2014). The first exhibition in…
Dry-5: Stories from the California Drought
Two Stanford alums and an undergraduate walk into a bar… Actually, they aren’t in a bar; they are on stage putting on a show about the California drought. So no drinks, but there is plenty of talk of being parched. The alumnae are MARI AMEND and DORIA CHARLSON, both of the Class of ’13, who…
