Stanford’s Big Catch: Jackson Pollock, “Lucifer,” 1947, Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson Collection
Stanford is on a major arts binge.
The university’s previously amorphous plans have now been somewhat fleshed out for its new facility to house 121 works from the legendary 20th-century American art collection of Harry W. (“Hunk”) and Mary Margaret (“Moo”) Anderson. As announced into today’s press release, the project will be designed by Ennead, the same architectural firm that designed Stanford’s new Bing Concert Hall, opening in January 2013.
At the same meeting where the university’s trustees this week approved the site for the Anderson Collection, they also gave site approval for the new $85-million McMurtry Building for the Department of Art & Art History (completion: fall 2015), to be designed by Diller Scofidio+Renfro and situated near the Cantor Arts Center.
The Anderson facility is projected to cost some $30.5 million. Its design will be submitted for the university trustees’ approval in April, with construction to begin next fall. (Completion: early 2014.)
No word yet on how the Anderson facility will be funded, other than what I was told by a university spokesperson at the time of my previous post (linked at the top): “University funds
from various sources, including philanthropy, are expected to be used for
the construction and operations of the Anderson Gallery.”
[UPDATES: Stanford spokesperson Lisa Lapin, responding to my query, told me that “the funding for the building is coming from the university. There is not an endowment.” Betsy Ennis, spokesperson for the Guggenheim Museum, proudly informed me that her husband, Richard Olcott, “is the design partner at Ennead who is designing the Anderson building, as well as the Bing concert hall.”]
In nearby San Francisco, fundraising appears to be proceeding with great success for the ambitious capital project of a more prominent showcase for 20th- and 21st-century art—the 235,000-square-foot expansion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which will accommodate (among other things) another local collector’s trove—the Fisher Collection.
According to SFMOMA’s recent announcement providing more detailed information about its Snøhetta-designed expansion, the museum “raised the capital campaign goal to $555 million from $480 million,” thanks, in part, to the great success of the “quiet phase” of the campaign, which has already netted some $437 million. This news, coupled with the Peabody Essex’s recent announcement that it had raised some $550 million towards its $650-million capital campaign for an expansion opening in 2016 (as well as for other projects) suggests that art philanthropy for bricks-and-mortar is alive and extremely robust, even in these economically uncertain times.
