A jar's headdress in the window of the round room at home.

A jar and its headdress containing artifacts from the restoration of the 1905 Murphy Windmill in Golden Gate Park.

The entrance to the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University

 

A telegram from Jane Stanford to Mark Hopkins expressing the loss of their son Leland Jr. to Typhoid Fever.

The Stanford Family Room at the Cantor Arts Center

Technology & Interior Aesthetics

From building the railroad that connected a growing nation to supporting the experiments in photography that laid the groundwork for motion pictures, the Stanfords were champions of technological progress. Their interest in emerging technologies was evident throughout their household: photographs hug on the walls (whereas other elites would show only traditional paintings) plus a photo-viewing contraption--the Megalethoscope--featured prominently in their living room.

Megalethoscope 1866-1867

Wood, metal, and glass

by Carlo Ponti Italy, c. 1823-1893

 

Jane's Jewels

In 1899 Jane commissioned a painting of her jewels to inventory the small treasures before they were put up for auction. They were then sold to support the university library. Formally established in 1908, the Jewel Fund still provides significant resources for library acquisitions that bolster the research interests of Stanford faculty and students; books purchased therough the fund bear a Jewel Fund bookplate. (The Jewel Society founded in 2007 now encompasses other sustaining funds that support library acquisitions.)

 

Tiffany & Co.

Renaissance Revival Clock c. 1876

From the Stanford Family Collections

 

Portrait of Senator Leland Stanford

1884

Oil on canvas

By Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat

France, 1834-1922

Leland Stanford Jr.

1884

Oil on canvas

By Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat France, 1834-1922

Leland Stanford

1881

Oil on canvas

By Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier

France 1815-1891

Jane Lathrop Stanford

1881

Oil on canvas

By Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat

France, 1834-1922

Portrait of Leland Stanford Jr.

1884

Oil on canvas

By Gustave-Claude-Etienne Courtois

After Leland Jr. died, his parents commissioned post-homous portraits and a death mask to grieve, accept, and memorialize the two-short life of their son. The Stanfords engaged deeply with the Victorian culture of mourning, which was perpetuated by high mortality rates of the era. The death mask was made directly from the face of the deceased and cast in plaster or a similar material. Photographs and death masks were often used to generate the posthumous portraits the celebrated the dead.

 

Goldsmith Maid Driven by Budd Doble, 1876

Oil on canvas

By Thomas Kirby Van Zandt

USA 1814-1886

Palo Alto Spring, 1878

Oil on canvas

By Thomas Hill

USA, b. England, 1829-1908

Viktoria, 1999

Unique cast bronze

Deborah Butterfield U.S.A. b.1949

Deborah Butterfield studied art at the Ubiversity of California at Davis before moving to a ranch in Bozeman Montana in 1976. Since then she has focused solely on the subject of the mare, producing six to ten horses each year in an inexhaustible exploration of the material and form. With each sculpture, Butterfield endows the animal with its own unique and complex personality that is dependent on the materials she uses and on her mood as she is working; these materials have included mud, wire, twigs, found metal, and bronze.

Viktoria was cast in bronze from an original model made of driftwood. The technique is especially notworthy for its striking resemblance to wood's natural texture, shape, and color. In this particular horse, Butterfield captured the gesture, power, and beauty as in a classical equestrian study.

Viktoria, 1999

Unique cast bronze

Deborah Butterfield U.S.A. b.1949

Vairochana

(Chinese:Palushena, Japanese:Birushana)

Copper alloy

China, Ming dynasty (1368-1644)

Vairochana (the "Illuminator," literally "Coming from the Sun") is one of five Transcendent or Dyani Buddhas. Here, he is depicted as described in the Brahmajalasutra, seated upon a lotus with a 1,000 petals thaat emit 100,000 Buddhas, each of whom will teach the doctrine to a different universe.

Death of the Buddha (Parinirvana)

15th century

Wood, gesso, gold, lacquer, and pigment

Artist unknown

China, Ming dynasty (1368-1644)

Tsongkhapa

18th century

Gilt copper

Mongolia

May 10, 2018–February 25, 2019

In this exhibition, artist Do Ho Suh uses a chandelier, wallpaper, and a decorative screen to focus attention on issues of migration and transnational identity. Using repetition, uniformity, and shifts in scale, Suh questions cultural and aesthetic differences between his native Korea and his adopted homes in the United States and Europe. The wallpaper Who Am We? (Multi) (2000) is made up of miniaturized yearbook portraits of the artist’s high school classmates, a nostalgic gesture that points both to the social connections of childhood and an immigrant’s estrangement from peers. While screens often decorate and divide Korean interiors, the many small figures that comprise Screen (2005) are used to examine opacity and transparency, division and connection, privacy and togetherness. The chandelier Cause and Effect (2007), composed of many figures appearing to rise from the shoulders of the single figure at bottom, playfully suggests that no matter where we travel, we carry the weight of our pasts on our shoulders.

Text from: Cantor Arts Center

Cause & Effect 2007

Acrylic, aluminum, disc, stainless steel frame, stainless steel cable, and monofilament

Do Ho Suh (South Korea, b. 1962) 

Detail of: Cause & Effect 2007

Acrylic, aluminum, disc, stainless steel frame, stainless steel cable, and monofilament

Do Ho Suh (South Korea, b. 1962) 

Detail of: Cause & Effect 2007

Acrylic, aluminum, disc, stainless steel frame, stainless steel cable, and monofilament

Do Ho Suh (South Korea, b. 1962) 

Screen, 2005

ABS and stainless steel

Do Ho Suh (South Korea, b. 1962) 

Screen, 2005

ABS and stainless steel

Do Ho Suh (South Korea, b. 1962) 

Screen, 2005

Screen, 2005

ABS and stainless steel

Do Ho Suh (South Korea, b. 1962) 

 

 

 

Dragon, 19th century

Crysral, bronze, and silver-gilt

Japan, Meiji period (1868-1912)

Dragon, 19th century

Ivory

Japan, Meiji period (1868-1912)

Articulated mental dragons were popular during the Meiji era. This most unusual example is composed of 134 seperate pieces, held together by a spring system; the claws, mouth, tongue, and horns are moveable as well as the bady and legs.

Detail of: Dragon, 19th century

Ivory

Japan, Meiji period (1868-1912)

Detail of: Dragon, 19th century

Ivory

Japan, Meiji period (1868-1912)

Woman with Attendants

Coral

China, 20th century

Vase

Rock crystal

China Ming dynasty (1368-1644)

Cause & Effect 2007

Acrylic, aluminum, disc, stainless steel frame, stainless steel cable, and monofilament

Do Ho Suh (South Korea, b. 1962) 

 

 

Chinesca Kneeling Woman 100 BCE-250 CE

Polychrome ceramic

Artist unknown

Nayarit, Mexico

Seated Figure 900-1000

Polychrome ceramic

Artist unknown

Colima, Mexico

Joined Male and Female Couple 100 BCE-250 CE

Polychrome ceramic

Artist unknown

Nayarit, Mexico

Pair of Seated Figures 250-500

Polychrome ceramic

Artist unknown

Jalisco, Mexico

Kneeling Blind Woman, Warrior, Dog, Figure Playing Rasp, Seated Prisoner

100 BCE-250 CE

Polychrome ceramic

Artist unknown

Nayarit, Mexico

Sacrifice Scene 250-500

Polychrome ceramic

Artist unknown

Veracruz, Mexico

Sacrifice Scene 250-500

Polychrome ceramic

Artist unknown

Veracruz, Mexico

Main Lobby of the Cantor Arts Center

 

Minerva Giustiniani, c.1890

Marble with brass spear

Antonio Frilli

Italy 1835-1892

Frilli's statue is a replica of a 2nd century Roman versin of a Greek bronze of the 4th century B.C. First documented in the Giustiniani collection in 1631, the statue was reputedly excavated from a site near an ancient Roman temple of Minerva. Thought to be a rare cult figure and not just a work of art, it gained popular renoun. In addition, its austere beauty supported the theory that it derived from the statue of Athena made by Phidias for the Parthenon. In 1805 the Giustiniani family sold the Minerva to Lucien Bonaparte who in turn sold it to Pope Pius VII in 1817 for the Vatican Collection, where it remains today.

 

Minerva, the Roman counterpart to the Greek goddess Athena, is the goddess of wisdom, the arts, and justice. She wears a helmet and bears a spear in her role as patroness of justified wars. the snake beside her may allude to Erichthonius, the mythical first king of the city of Athens whom the goddess had reared. As depicted on a Greek vase in the Staatliche Museum, Berlin, he is characterized as a serpentine being. Around Minerva's neck is the aegis, a protective collar described by the Roman author Virgil as "a fearsome thing with a surface od gold-like scaly snake-skin." Forged by the god Hephestus, Athena later afixed the head of Medusa to it.

Kitchen Pieces, 1890

Oil on canvas

Richard La Barre Goodwin

U.S.A. 1840-1910

 

Minerva, the Roman counterpart to the Greek goddess Athena, is the goddess of wisdom, the arts, and justice. She wears a helmet and bears a spear in her role as patroness of justified wars. the snake beside her may allude to Erichthonius, the mythical first king of the city of Athens whom the goddess had reared. As depicted on a Greek vase in the Staatliche Museum, Berlin, he is characterized as a serpentine being. Around Minerva's neck is the aegis, a protective collar described by the Roman author Virgil as "a fearsome thing with a surface od gold-like scaly snake-skin." Forged by the god Hephestus, Athena later afixed the head of Medusa to it.

Fight between Dogs and Bear 1602-57

Oil on canvas

Artist unknown

Flanders, active 17th century

after Frans Snyders

Flanders, 1569-1657

Dog with head of an Ox, 1602-57

Oil on canvas

Frans Snyders

Flanders, 1569-1657

St. Sebastian Attended by Irene, 1615-16

Oil on canvas

Nicolas Regnier

France, c.1590-1667

 

The Thinker 1903

Bronze

Auguste Rodin

(1840 -1917)

Weighing in at approximately one ton and measuring more than 6 feet tall in a seated position, this iconic work by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin commands center stage in the Diekman Gallery.

When conceived in 1880 in its original size (approx. 70 cm) as the crowning element of The Gates of Hell, seated on the tympanum, The Thinker was entitled The Poet. He represented Dante, author of the Divine Comedy which had inspired The Gates, leaning forward to observe the circles of Hell, while meditating on his work. The Thinker was therefore initially both a being with a tortured body, almost a damned soul, and a free-thinking man, determined to transcend his suffering through poetry. The pose of this figure owes much to Carpeaux’s Ugolino (1861) and to the seated portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici carved by Michelangelo (1526-31).

While remaining in place on the monumental Gates of Hell, The Thinker was exhibited individually in 1888 and thus became an independent work. Enlarged in 1904, its colossal version proved even more popular: this image of a man lost in thought, but whose powerful body suggests a great capacity for action, has became one of the most celebrated sculptures ever known. Numerous casts exist worldwide, including the one now in the gardens of the Musée Rodin, a gift to the City of Paris installed outside the Panthéon in 1906, and another in the gardens of Rodin’s house in Meudon, on the tomb of the sculptor and his wife.

Household Find, 1990

Ironing board, tin, wood, and Plexiglas

Willie Cole

U.S.A. b. 1955

Soundsuit, 2015

Mixed media, including beaded and sequined garments, fabric, hair, and found objects

Nick Cave

U.S.A. b. 1959

Soundsuit, 2015

Nick Cave

U.S.A. b. 1959

Detail of: Soundsuit, 2015

Detail of: Soundsuit, 2015

Detail of: Soundsuit, 2015

A view of the McMurtry Family Terrace from the Freidenrich Family Gallery at the Cantor Art Center

McMurtry Family Terrace at the Cantor Art Center

Detail of: Minerva Giustiniani, c.1890

Marble with brass spear

Antonio Frilli

Italy 1835-1892

Frilli's statue is a replica of a 2nd century Roman versin of a Greek bronze of the 4th century B.C. First documented in the Giustiniani collection in 1631, the statue was reputedly excavated from a site near an ancient Roman temple of Minerva. Thought to be a rare cult figure and not just a work of art, it gained popular renoun. In addition, its austere beauty supported the theory that it derived from the statue of Athena made by Phidias for the Parthenon. In 1805 the Giustiniani family sold the Minerva to Lucien Bonaparte who in turn sold it to Pope Pius VII in 1817 for the Vatican Collection, where it remains today.

Detail of: Minerva Giustiniani, c.1890

Marble with brass spear

Antonio Frilli

Italy 1835-1892

 

Stanford University is the home to the core of the Anderson Collection, one of the world’s most outstanding private assemblies of modern and contemporary American art. 

The collection is a gift from Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson and Mary Patricia Anderson Pence, the Bay Area family who built the collection over the last 50 years.

The Anderson Collection at Stanford University is adjacent to Cantor Arts Center and the McMurtry Building for the Department of Art and Art History, and across Palm Drive from Bing Concert Hall and Frost Amphitheater. The addition of this remarkable art collection strengthens Stanford’s growing commitment to the arts and the connection between the study, creation and experience of arts.

 

The Anderson Family and the Collection

The Andersons' criteria for collecting is

"Have we seen it before, and could we have thought of it?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Stanford Mausoleum

What You Don't Know About...The Mausoleum

By Jenny Pegg

Read more of Jenny Pegg's article in the Stanford Alumni Magazine here.

Braces of sphinxes wing thee to thy rest. Jane Stanford pondered many decisions in building the Mausoleum, but one important change order involved the commission of Greek sphinxes to flank the doors. An archival document notes that Mrs. Stanford, upon seeing the woman/lion statues, "found the artistic effect not pleasing." The buxom sphinxes were moved to the back of the building, and more androgynous specimens were installed up front.

From the article by: Jenny Pegg

 

 

 

Stanford Resurrects Statue of Founding Family / Politics kept bronze stored for 20 years

Michaela Jarvis, Chronicle Staff Writer

  Saturday, June 20, 1998

Having survived a fight over gender politics, a thumb amputation and 20 years in storage, a nearly 100-year-old bronze statue of Stanford University's founding family finally found its way back to public display in 1998. 

The statue was placed next to the Stanford Mausoleum after nearly a century of being moved around campus. Its latest relocation brought the statue out of the obscurity imposed after a 1987 controversy. At that time, Stanford feminists objected to how the statue portrayed university co-founder Jane Lathrop Stanford. To read the SF Chronicle article by Michaela Jarvis, go here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Detail of the bronze doors od the Stanford Mausoleum

 

 

 

Hoover Tower at Stanford University

Hoover Tower Trivia

Gay Liberation, 1980

Painted bronze

George Segal

U.S.A. 1924-2000

 

Gay Liberation by George Segal at Stanford University To read more about this statue, its controversy and repeated vandalism, go here.

 

Christopher Hildreth

Outreach Cooridinator for the Office of the Founder

the Jane Goodall Institute

Dr. Jane Goodall

the Jane Goodall Institute

Jane Goodall's Roots & Shoots

Dave and Jane

Dave, Jane, & Ron