Changes in the Collection Galleries

Many of the Center's 24 galleries present works from the collection plus long-term loans. Each collection gallery is dedicated to a distinct era or type of art. Together the galleries span the history of art from ancient China and Egypt to the 21st century. Works in the collection galleries change on a regular basis.

Freidenrich Family Gallery
Robert Motherwell
May 6 – November 16, 2009
This rotation features works by the American abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), who graduated from Stanford University in 1936. Along with his contemporaries including Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, Motherwell focused on the energy and emotion in art-making. This rotation includes loans from the Marmor Collection in addition to works from the collection.
IMAGE: Robert Motherwell (U.S.A., 1915-1991). Harvest, in Scotland, 1973. Lithograph with collage. Lent by The Marmor Foundation.

Freidenrich Family Gallery
Drive-by Shooting: Photographs by Robert Frank
May 6 – November 16, 2009
After emigrating from Switzerland in 1947, Robert Frank (b. 1924) began to document his travels throughout the United States. With a camera and old car, Frank began a solitary road trip shooting photos that span from coast to coast. His black and white photographs of ordinary objects and city scenes encapsulate a sense of loneliness and banality, reflecting Frank's personal experience with American life and landscape. The exhibition features examples from The Americans, Frank's most celebrated body of work.
IMAGE: Robert Frank (U.S.A., b. Switzerland, 1924). Detroit, 1955. Gelatin-silver print. Gift of Raymond B. Gary.

Early Modern Gallery
February 25 – October 4, 2009
This rotation showcases loans from two collections and includes a group of vibrant German expressionist works by artists such as Erich Heckel and Max Pechstein plus a number of paintings by Hungarian artists from the first half of the 20th century. A portion of the gallery will feature works created at Atelier 17, Stanley William Hayter's innovative print workshop. As a pioneer of modern engraving, Hayter is revered for establishing print as a major medium of artistic expression in Europe and America in the 20th century.

Madeleine H. Russell Gallery
Chinese Contemporary Art on loan from Mr. and Mrs. L. S. Kwee
While Chinese contemporary art demonstrates the continuity of cultural tradition in the use of media and imagery that resonate with the past, it also mirrors the dramatic changes that China has undergone in the recent past, particularly since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. Liu Xiaodong's recent oil painting A Highway Near the Yangzi is among works on view.

Portrait of a woman with dark hairPatricia S. Rebele Gallery
Painting from the Ancient Mediterranean
September 3, 2008 – April 12, 2009
This rotation presents two objects — a 6th century B.C. Greek drinking bowl and a 2nd- or 3rd- century Egyptian portrait — from the Ancient Mediterranean collection. The larger collection of such objects is off view for several months due to the reinstallation of the Rodin sculptures.
IMAGE: Unknown, Portrait of a Woman, 160-225. Encaustic on cypress wood. Stanford Family Collections

Rowland K. Rebele and Geballe Family Balcony
The Metaphysics of Notation
March 18, 2009 – March 28, 2010
This graphic score composed by Stanford professor Mark Applebaum is the current Faculty Choice on view. Inspired by the venue and its performance opportunities, this installation wraps around the Geballe Family Balcony overlooking the Main Lobby, and is anchored in the Rowland K. Rebele Gallery. Weekly, unique performances of the score are held between 12 noon and 1 pm each Friday. Read more

Robert Mondavi Family Gallery
Recent Acquisitions
October 8, 2008 – March 15, 2009
This rotation of works on paper includes recent acquisitions and promised gifts in conjunction with the major exhibition in the Pigott Family Gallery, Dürer to Picasso. Also highlighted is the dialogue between Western and Japanese artists, as seen in Toyohara Chikanobu’s woodblockprint of a woman dressed in the latest Parisian style and in Félix Buhot’s etchings of Japanese objects.

Early European Gallery
Goltzius and His Circle
October 8, 2008 – March 15, 2009
In addition to making his own engravings and woodcuts, Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) also produced designs for a large circle of artists, which he published and distributed throughout Europe. Including promised gifts from the collection of Kirk Edward Long and the Center's own collection, this exhibition complements the show on Goltzius himself by highlighting works by the artists in his immediate circle. Included are a series depicting the Adriaen de Vries Rape of a Sabine by Jan Muller, a recently acquired Mars and Venus by Jacob Matham after a design by Goltzius, who was his father-in-law, and other prints for which Goltzius provided designs. In addition to highlighting Goltzius's influence, this selection also demonstrates the range of secular and religious subject matter popular at this time.



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