Campus Stories - Posts
Acoustic Jukebox Restores Intimacy to Student Performance
Listening to music should be an intimate experience, but on a campus as large as Stanford’s, that often proves difficult. Danny Smith ’13 sought to fix this last spring, when he began the weekly music series Acoustic Jukebox as an independent project in the lounge of Enchanted Broccoli Forest (EBF), where he has lived for the past…
TAPS presents Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Guest performance by Guillermo Gómez-Peña on 11/28 has been cancelled. Guillermo Gómez-Peña is a performance artist, writer, activist, radical pedagogue and director of the performance troupe La Pocha Nostra. Born in Mexico City, he moved to the US in 1978. His performance work and 10 books have contributed to the debates on cultural diversity, border culture and…
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…
Who Needs The Humanities at Start-Up U’?
Freshman Saya Jenks comes from nearby Menlo Park, but she admits to having initially misjudged Stanford when weighing college choices. She had the Farm pegged as an imperfect place for someone with her interests, which start with theater. When two friends who were a year ahead of her in high school picked the University for…
‘This American Life’s’ Ira Glass shares storytelling insights
Most college-age students were just wee toddlers when This American Life was born on the radio in 1995. Thus, many grew up listening as their parents listened to host Ira Glass and his quirky contributors – David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell and David Rakoff, to name a few – delight in the ordinary and find poignancy in the everyday. For many, Glass is an…
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…
NaNoWriMo’s Creator, Chris Baty, Talks Shop
Chris Baty’s ebullient voice and San Franciscan diction convey an excited, restless passion, whether he’s discussing writing or the weather. An author, speaker, blogger, and freelance journalist, he’s perhaps best known as the founder of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). He visited a Stanford course designed around NaNoWriMo, taking notes and listening attentively as students gave…
On purpose, rhythm, and writing your own story
It hasn’t escaped my attention that this blog seems a bit neglected as of late, but I hope you all will excuse me for the long silences because for the first time in what I feel like is years, I am going full force after something that I want: a goal, a purpose, a reason….
Stanford students join weekend architectural challenge
Nine student/architect teams assembled at a private residence in Portola Valley, Calif., on Friday, Oct. 26, for dinner to launch a weekend of intense design and serious competition. The assignment is to design an artist’s cottage to be built on Sonia Dhillon-Marty’s property, Champ de Portola, by 2014. Nine architects from four countries paired with…
Ceremonial turning of the soil delights the Anderson family and guests
Earlier this week, at a groundbreaking ceremony on the north side of the Cantor Arts Center, more than 200 invited guests looked on as Hunk, Moo and Putter Anderson put golden shovels in the dirt to commemorate the official start of construction on the building to house the Anderson Collection at Stanford University. Provost John…
Alexander Nemerov and Richard Meyer Join the Department of Art & Art History at Stanford University
Stanford University is pleased to announce the appointment on August 1, 2012, of two distinguished scholar-teachers as professors of art history in the Department of Art & Art History: Alexander Nemerov and Richard Meyer. The arrival of Nemerov and Meyer reinforces Stanford’s preeminent leadership in American art and further enhances the excellence of the department. Nemerov…
Stanford Arts looking ahead to 2016, the 125th anniversary of the opening of Stanford University
In a recent issue of Stanford magazine, Stanford President John Hennessy wrote about the many ways that The Stanford Challenge has been transforming the university through increased financial aid, interdisciplinary graduate fellowships, professorships and new facilities. He wrote that the Stanford Challenge, which concluded in December 2011 after raising $6.2 billion, was the most successful campaign in U.S. higher-education…
Pianos everywhere
Have you played a piano recently? If you are on the Stanford campus, there is no excuse not to be practicing your Chopin or plunking out Chopsticks year-round, because there are more than 200 acoustic pianos on campus and more than half of them are found outside of the classroom, ready to be played. Stanford…
Excavating an Echo
The Byzantine Empire was married to water. Jutting out at the tip of a peninsula, ancient Constantinople was embraced by the Bosporus Sea on one side and the Marmara Sea on the other. And at its heart, the magnificent Hagia Sophia. At once a bulwark against the sea and an apotheosis of its marvels, the basilica…
Stanford’s ‘Another Look’ to discuss the best books you’ve never read
Book clubs have proliferated across the United States, though most stick to middle-of-the-road bestsellers. Once in a while, however, you run across an off-the-beaten-track book you may not know about, praised by a leading literary figure. Where do you go to talk about this unfamiliar, top-notch fare? Look no further. Stanford is allowing readers to…
Robert Whitman: Local Report 2012
Local Report 2012 was an international media and telecommunications work in which Robert Whitman used live video and audio reports from approximately ninety participants around the world. Whitman used these reports to create a live sound and video performance, composing what he calls “a cultural map of the world.” Local Report 2012 was the latest…
