Campus Stories - Posts
Stanford art historian explores the shocking yet affirmative power of gay imagery
News coverage of recent milestones in gay rights routinely includes images of happy same-sex couples kissing in celebration. But according to Stanford art historian Richard Meyer, visuals of same-sex kisses and other gay images do much more than illustrate happy moments. In making formerly private content public, such scenes “help to create queer culture by…
Works from American art giants enter Stanford’s permanent collection
When Connie Wolf took over the helm at the Cantor Arts Center in 2012, she began seeking out opportunities to build on the Cantor’s strong collections and its legacy. Under her leadership, the museum recently experienced a dramatic expansion of its collection through three significant gifts of American art: Richard Diebenkorn’s sketchbooks donated by his…
Stanford Repertory Theater in the throes of a whale hunt and preparing for an alien invasion
Perhaps it was Orson Welles’ fascination with magic as a youth that inspired him to turn a 200,000-word novel into a 90-minute play. The trick worked. His Moby Dick – Rehearsed invokes the sea, the great white whale and the infectious mania of Captain Ahab with just a few props, some scaffolding and a remarkable…
Stanford Engineering and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism announce Magic Grants to transform the world of media
The David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation has awarded its 2014-2015 Magic Grants to eight teams of students, faculty, alumni and post-doctoral researchers from Columbia and Stanford universities to develop new technologies that could transform the way media content is produced, delivered and consumed. Offered annually, Magic Grants are made possible by…
Stanford students showcase creative learning tools at Aug. 1 LDT Expo
For Rhoda Wang’s “Kibuni,” it was memories of building forts as a child. For Farah Weheba’s “Beity,” it was Syrian children refugees at risk of suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. For Kay Christensen’s “Make Me,” it was her music background along with people’s apparent lack of time to do creative things. Their inspirations came from different…
Inspiring Stanford humanities majors to consider business careers
On a recent summer morning, a lecture hall at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) was filled with students from around the world who were ready to analyze the fall – and subsequent resurrection – of an American kidney dialysis company. To prepare for the lecture, titled “A Deep Dive into Company Culture,” the students…
Coming up Next
Stanford Live is excited to hold its inaugural summer season. The program kicked off with the St. Lawrence String Quartet on June 23. For the first time, the Stanford and Bay Area community will be able to enjoy Stanford Live’s varied and exciting performances during the summer months. Stanford Live has also announced its full…
Stanford students learn to build their own bikes
In the summer of 2001, Ryan Connolly wanted to build a bicycle from scratch. Connolly, a master’s student majoring in manufacturing systems engineering, had met a master frame builder in Palo Alto and convinced him to come to the Product Realization Lab (PRL) and share his knowledge. That fall quarter, Connolly learned to design and…
Stanford’s McMurtry Building is the third new arts building in as many years
Since hatching the idea of a university arts district in 2007, Stanford has delivered two of three new buildings to join Cantor Arts Center and Frost Amphitheater in a concentration of arts spaces on either side of the Palm Drive entrance to campus. The Bing Concert Hall has already hosted more than 150 performances since…
Stanford art historian uncovers commodity culture in Mondrian’s legacy
From Yves St. Laurent’s famed shift dresses to hotel décor, furniture and even jigsaw puzzles, among other “Mondriana,” Dutch artist Piet Mondrian’s imagery has become ubiquitous in consumer culture. Best known for geometric abstract paintings with asymmetrical arrangements of rectangles in primary colors (red, yellow and blue) as well as black, white and gray, Mondrian…
Summer Swing at the Bing on 7-26
In a turn—or maybe a twirl—away from Bing Concert Hall’s usual programs, Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, a local institution, are playing not the auditorium but the lobby. The band’s sizzling jazz will come complete with swing dance instruction from two Stanford grads, Paul Csonka and Rachel Liaw. Smith, a one-of-a-kind diva…
Time Out
The third annual Frost Music and Arts Festival took place on Saturday, May 17. On stage, campus-based mash-up Paper Void joined psychedelic pop band Yeasayer as opening acts for the indie group Dispatch. The festival took place in mid-quarter 2014—right in the middle of exams and papers. But the experience was an afternoon out of…
Stanford Dance Division breaks new ground with ‘Construction Site’
Wear sturdy shoes, bring a flashlight, prepare to step lively, bikes and skateboards optional. Not the usual set of instructions for attending a dance production, but the arts at Stanford aren’t always predictable. In a year that saw choreographer Jérôme Bel enlist untrained members of the Stanford community to perform in The Show Must Go…
Stanford Live and Stanford Repertory Theater ramp up for summer
This spring, Stanford Repertory Theater collaborated with Stanford Theater and Performance Studies and the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society to produce J.B. Priestley’s classic British thriller, An Inspector Calls. The play serves as both the closing production to the TAPS 2014 season and the capstone event for the Ethics in Society Ethics Of…
Stanford showcases Carleton Watkins’ landscape photographs of the American West
For the fantasy dinner party that one would plan in celebration of Carleton Watkins’ exhibition at Cantor Arts Center, you would start with Watkins at the head of the table. Add special guests President Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Yosemite Valley Grant Act in 1864 based on Watkins’ photographs; Leland Stanford, who was governor of…
Contemporary artwork in spotlight at Stanford’s engineering, science buildings
DeWitt Cheng, a 1971 Stanford alumnus, recently took over the Stanford Art Spaces program, which has been in existence nearly 30 years. He sat down with Stanford Report to talk about the history and future of the program and how he thinks about artwork in non-traditional exhibition spaces. How did Stanford Art Spaces come to…
