Campus Stories - cantor arts center
Cantor Arts Center launches Asian American Art Initiative bolstered by major Ruth Asawa acquisition, The Michael Donald Brown Collection and other works
The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University announced today the establishment of the Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI), a significant effort to acquire, preserve, display and research art related to Asian American and Asian diaspora artists and their practices. The initiative is anchored by the museum’s acquisition of 233 ceramic masks that comprise Untitled (LC. 012, Wall of Masks) by Ruth…
To instruct, entertain and persuade: political art at the Cantor
As the 2020 presidential election approaches, artists across the nation – including Deborah Kass, Richard Serra, Stephanie Syjuco, Carrie Mae Weems and others represented in the Cantor Arts Center’s permanent collection – are creating new works to protest, comment on U.S. politics and inspire people to vote. Elizabeth Kathleen Mitchell, the Burton and Deedee McMurtry Curator and…
Cantor Center curator named to National Gallery of Art fellowship
The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), an internationally renowned research institution that convenes scholars from around the globe at the National Gallery of Art, announced that Cantor Arts Center Associate Curator of European Art PATRICK CROWLEY will be among its 2020-21 academic year appointments. Crowley, who specializes in classical antiquity, will serve as CASVA’s spring…
Cantor lights celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment
To commemorate this year’s 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, the Cantor Arts Center was washed aglow in purple and gold, the official colors of the suffrage movement, for the night of Aug. 25. The 19th Amendment granted millions of women the right to vote. The special light show harked back to “Forward into Light,”…
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…
PhD candidate explores Persia’s Safavid Empire in her exhibition at the Cantor
The Safavid era (1501–1722) is a fascinating epoch in Iranian history, yet unfamiliar to many. When the Safavids came to power, they brought a huge expanse of territory—stretching from modern day Iraq to Afghanistan—under their control. With different cultures and ethnicities under their reign, the arts played a key role in developing a cohesive Safavid…
Saying hello to OY/YO at Cantor Arts Center
Cantor Arts Center hopes its newest sculpture, OY/YO by artist Deborah Kass, acts as an extension of the museum’s new vision to present art and ideas in contemporary and inclusive ways. The piece was installed Dec. 20 and is now on view to the public. Deborah Kass (U.S.A., b. 1952), OY/YO, 2019. Aluminum, polymer and clear coat, 96 x 194.5…
Looking at Richard Diebenkorn at the Cantor
American painter Richard Diebenkorn’s connection to Stanford is deep as well as broad. Not only was Diebenkorn an alum, but even after his death in 1993, his impact has continued on campus thanks to the number of significant artworks given and lent to Stanford, the digitization of his sketchbooks and the documented examination via infrared…
The compelling origin story of the Stanford museum, university and Silicon Valley
When Jane and Leland Stanford experienced the immense pain of losing their only son, Leland Jr., just before his 16th birthday, they were compelled to enshrine his memory in a meaningful way. The resulting museum and university they founded not only secured young Leland’s place in history – artist Mark Dion argues that this particular…
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…
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….
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…
