Walking around campus, one can readily see the impact of Stanford’s Arts Initiative. Joining the existing Cantor Arts Center are several new buildings, including the Bing Concert Hall, which opened in 2013, the Anderson Collection at Stanford University, which opened on September 21st, and the growing structure that will be the McMurtry Building, slated to open in 2015.

In parallel with this new focus on the arts, the MSS division in Special Collections has worked over the last year with Peter Blank and Anna Fishaut at the Art & Architecture Library, in identifying and funding the preservation and processing of four recently acquired art collections. Some of the projects will include selected reformatting of audio-visual elements, processing of digital files, additional digitization efforts, and collaboration with the libraries’ Department of Conservation and the Art Library’s Visual Resources Center.

These collections include:

•  Ruth Asawa project, begun in the fall of 2013 by Franz Kunst, will conclude at the end of fall (2014);
• Gyorgy Kepes project, begun during the summers of 2012 & 2013 by two graduate students in Art History - John Blakinger and Grant Hamming, will be completed around the end of Spring 2015 by archivist, Franz Kunst;
• Carolee Schneemann project, will begin mid-fall and is slated to be completed sometime in the fall of 2015 by archivist Joe Geller;
• Helen and Newton Harrison papers are being processed by archivist Lucy Waldrop. This last project is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and will end be completed by Feb 2016.