Stanford Students & Faculty

Love, Death and Mourning at Stanford

This page features objects included in the exhibition and on view in Cantor’s two Stanford Family Galleries based on themes of mourning, loss, and the Stanford empire in the Melancholy Museum.

By Sanford Biggers

Sanford Biggers (b. 1970) builds fantastical composite art objects, or invents images of them, to explore the hybrid ideas born out of encounters between different cultures.

An eclectic selection of twelve prints and drawings given by Stanford alumna Marilyn F. Symmes (BA, ’71) ranging from an Italian Renaissance portrait a stark memorial to the World Trade Center in New York.

Sketchbooks

Throughout his long career, seminal California artist Richard Diebenkorn (Stanford BA ’49) always kept a sketchbook—a “portable studio,” as he called it—to capture his ideas. The books contain 1,045 drawings that span the artist’s career and represent the range of styles and subjects he explored.

Photography Archive

This collection of Warhol’s contact sheets – printed thumbnails from a roll of film – represents the complete range of the American artist’s black-and-white photographic practice from 1976 until his unexpected death in 1987.

This impressive collection is the result of a close working relationship and friendship between Albert Elsen (1927–1995), the Stanford University curator, professor, and Rodin scholar, and B. Gerald Cantor (1916–1996), the American financier and philanthropist.

His pioneering work in photographic studies of motion took place in a studio at Stanford's Palo Alto Stock Farm, using Leland Sr.'s horse 'Occidental' as his subject.

Though each photograph can be shown separately, a group of five displayed together has the greatest effect. Surf Sequence is one of my most successful photographic expressions. ―Ansel Adams

Photography Collection at Stanford University

This gift includes works by American photographic masters Ansel Adams, Edward Curtis, John Gutmann, Helen Levitt, Wright Morris, Gordon Parks, and Edward Weston.

Commerce in Early Modern Europe

European artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries took great interest in depicting what was new and exciting in public life, including the rapidly expanding market for material goods and services.

Spaces for Experiencing Art in Europe, 1600-1800

Before public and private art museums proliferated in Europe during the nineteenth century, artists illustrated—and imagined—emerging public venues where art was experienced, discussed, and collected.

Art Since 1950

In 1964, Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan published his groundbreaking study, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, in which he argues that the way information is transmitted is as important as the content being conveyed—or in his words, “the medium is the message.”

Exhibition Brochure

Explore the cultural exchanges between the Safavid Empire in Persia and Europe in Crossing the Caspian.

Exhibition Catalog

Explore a gift of drawings, prints, and paintings by African American modernist Jacob Lawrence addressing Black history and civil rights, public life, faith, and creativity.

Exhibition Brochure

This Mellon curatorial research assistantship project reveals new insights about objects in the Cantor’s collection in order to demonstrate the complexity of labels such as “authentic,” “fake,” and “forgery.”

Exhibition Catalog

Curated by Stanford PhD Candidates, Left of Center seeks to show how modes of art-making that originated on the West Coast decisively changed the topography of American modernism.

and the Assertion of Modern Figurative Sculpture

Representing the breadth of the artist’s oeuvre, this book offers insights into the development of Manuel Neri’s sculpture and a fresh perspective on his contributions to contemporary art.

Feature Essays

Explore the Andersons' journey of art discovery made possible with the guidance of two prominent Stanford University professors—Albert E. Elsen and Nathan Oliveira—as well as Henry Sayles Francis, a retired curator from the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Helen Heninger, who developed the Andersons’ first working collection plan.

Stanford offers a wide array of research digital resources through their libraries. Explore notable collections, digital archives and online exhibits available. The Library also offers services for Faculty and guidance for Students on how to search through their catalog.

For more to explore, visit Museums From Home, a digest of digital visual arts content for the broader community. Explore digitized collections, virtual tours, recorded lectures and oral histories and more through this new online portal.

Digital & printable PDFs and in-depth object narratives from our collection

Our curators have prepared special learning guides for use with Stanford coursework and research. Videos and virtual gallery talks will be available in upcoming weeks!