Stanford is once again open to the public. Last Friday they prepared for the big game against Cal, student bikers zipped around campus, and the art museums are open. We took advantage of the fact that we are able to enjoy the art again, and visited the Anderson Collection.
First, you have to register online to be admitted to the museums. Each museum, the Anderson Collection and the Cantor, have their own registration. We were able to register in front of the museum and walked right in.
There are currently three new exhibits. First, on the ground floor Sam Richardson’s Islands, Ice, and Sand. Eerily fitting was the subject of climate change in his resin molded landscapes. The piece Most of that Iceberg is Below the Water (1969) for example draws the viewer in with the facets and effect of the light reflecting the pattern above. In fact, Richardson’s art is about 50 years old and has regained meaning in recent years.
The wall installation, Hostile Terrain 94, shows more than 3000 handwritten toe tags, each representing a person that died crossing the US/Mexican border at the Sonoran Desert of Arizona between the mid-1990s and 2019. This participatory art project by the Undocumented Migration Project is hosted simultaneously in over 130 locations on 6 continents and started in the fall of 2020.
On the second floor is Eamon Ore-Giron’s Non Plus Ultra. Ore-Giron’s large linen canvases with the gold applications and geometric shapes invoke a history of transnational gold exchange. He moves this subject further by exchanging black with the gold in the later series “as a rejection of colonial legacies and the value system that supports it.”
The Anderson Collection
is open Wednesdays to Sundays from 11 am – 5 pm.
Sam Richardson: Islands, Ice, and Sand, until March 13, 2022
Undocumented Migrant Project: Hostile Terrain 94, until January 30, 2022
Eamon Ore-Giron: Non Plus Ultra, until February 20, 2022
Visitor parking is right in front of the Museums, but requires downloading an app in order to pay for it.
Have you visited the Anderson Art Collection lately?
Now that the Stanford campus is open again you might want to explore it. To get ideas check out my list of 50 things to do in Stanford.