Cantor Arts Center
328 Lomita Drive at Museum Way
Stanford, CA 94305-5060
Phone: 650-723-4177
Stanford University acquires Filipina American artist Pacita Abad’s archive
Stanford University acquires Filipina American artist Pacita Abad’s archive
Pacita Abad in Washington, DC, around 1976 with several of her paintings. Courtesy the Pacita Abad archives, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries
In Pacita Abad’s lifetime, the Filipina American artist made over 5,000 works—influenced by her travels in more than 60 countries—and exhibited in more than 250 shows, largely in Asia and Africa. But it was her posthumous travelling retrospective—which opened in 2023 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, almost two decades after her death in 2004 at age 58—that brought Abad’s exuberant, multifaceted, 32-year art practice to the attention of US institutions.
Now Stanford University has acquired the artist’s archives, a gift of the Pacita Abad Art Estate, which has also provided funding to catalogue the 120 linear feet of archival boxes filled with photographs, correspondence, exhibition records and personal artefacts.