How might we juxtapose items within the Stanford Family collection to build a visual narrative of Gilded Age mourning and the university’s rich history?
Role: Contributor, Student
Date: Winter 2020
Prompt: Using what we’ve learned in the course, Wonder, Curiosity and Collecting: Building a Stanford Cabinet of Curiosities, students will create a contemporary cabinet in collaboration with the artist Mark Dion and contribute to the accompanying publication, Field Guide to the Stanford Family Collections.
The Humble Beginnings of the Stanford Museum.
The Stanford University Museum of Art, founded in 1894, was a private collection meant to be comparable to the greatest public institutions in the United States. At one point, the Stanford University Museum of Art was housed in a structure larger than either “the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts” and “was the largest privately-owned museum building in the world.”
But, while it may have, at one point, been presented to be the most marvelous private collection in the United States, the Stanford Museum of Arts had humble beginnings as a small collection by Stanford’s only son in their Nob Hill mansion. Although the Stanford’s played an active role in ensuring Leland Stanford Jr. would have the means to build upon his collection and mature into a man fit to be the heir to the Stanford legacy, the implication of these actions leads many to believe that the ambition for Leland’s cultural and personal ventures was the result of his parent’s influence. In light of their only son’s passing, the Stanford’s swore to spread knowledge to the youth of the western United States. However, it was the museum’s original founder, Leland Stanford Jr., who truly set the precedent of higher education and cultural refinement in California.