In the spring of 2011, Stanford University reached out to Richard Olcott, partner at Ennead Architects, asking him to design a new museum space for a major collection of artwork recently acquired by the school. A gift from Harry “Hunk” and Mary Margaret “Moo” Anderson—as well as their daughter Mary Patricia “Putter” Anderson Pence—the 121 masterworks by 86 artists represent a comprehensive catalog of postwar American movements: Abstract Expressionism, Post-Minimalism, Bay-Area Figurative Art, and Light and Space, among them. Highlights include Jackson Pollock’s Lucifer (1947), Willem de Kooning’s Woman Standing—Pink (1954-55), Clyfford Still’s 1957-J No. 1 (1957), and Ellsworth Kelly’s Black Ripe (1955).
To house the trove of work, Olcott devised a lantern-like box floating above a glass-enclosed lobby and capped by a rectangular band clearstory windows. The ground floor of the two-story building houses all of the museum’s supplemental spaces—a foyer and restrooms, loading docks and storage, and a teaching space—while the second floor is comprised of galleries arrayed around a wide central stair. Exterior construction on the 33,000-square-foot structure has just been finished, and when it opens in September 2014, the building will complete a new arts district at the entrance to the campus.
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