Hobart and William Smith Colleges

19 September 2014 Anderson Collection Opens at Stanford

A recent gift from Harry W. Hunk Anderson 49, LL.D. 67, his wife Mary Margaret Moo and their daughter Mary Patricia Putter Anderson Pence, makes public one of the worlds most substantial collections of modern and contemporary American art. The Anderson Collection, opening at Stanford University this September, features 121 paintings and sculptures from 86 renowned artists, such as Jackson Pollack, Willem De Kooning and Hans Hoffman. The work in the collection, which the Andersons built over the course of 50 years, exemplifies significant artistic movements in 20th century painting and sculpture, including Bay Area Abstraction, Bay Area Figuration, California Light & Space, Color Field Painting, Contemporary Painting, Funk, Hard-Edge Painting, New York School, and Post-Minimalism. The gift among the most magnanimous in recent memory, as a recent review in the Los Angeles Times put it is the latest instance of the Andersons artistic philanthropy. In the past, other pieces from their collection have been loaned to museums and special exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The Andersons have also gifted significant portions of their collection to these museums, including their extensive Pop Art collection to the SFMOMA and more than 650 graphic works to the FAMSF, establishing the Anderson Graphic Arts Collection. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, Hunk enrolled at Hobart and met Moo, then a student at DYouville College, at the yacht club in Geneva. During Hunks senior year, he co-founded the food service company Saga with William F. Scandling 49, LL.D. 67 and W. Price Laughlin 49. Hunk and Moo both graduated in 1949 and were married in 1950. When the Saga national headquarters opened in Menlo Park, Calif., in the early 1960s, they settled in the San Francisco Bay area. Soon after, they began collecting art. As the San Francisco Chronicle recently reported, Hunk and Moo didnt know much about artbefore they first visited Paris in 1964 and made their way into theLouvre. The museum excursion lasted only half a day, but it turned into a lifetime of collectingart. Fifty years and about 2,000 acquisitions later, Hunk and Mooenjoy the sort of monosyllabic recognition in the American art scene that Sting, Cher and Prince command in popculture. Opening the weekend of Sept. 20, the Anderson Collection will be housed in a new 33,000-square-foot-building that includes dedicated gallery spaces, offices, a conference room, a library/study area and storage spaces. Read more news and reviews of the Anderson Collection here.