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Cantor Arts Center Announces Major Gift of Contemporary Art from the MARMOR FOUNDATION

Stanford, California, July 2005 —Thomas K. Seligman, the Freidenrich Director of Cantor Arts Center, is pleased to announce a pledge from the Marmor Foundation to donate a collection of contemporary art to the museum over the next twenty years. The donation, given by Stanford University School of Medicine professor Dr. Michael Marmor, his wife Dr. Jane Marmor, and children, Dr. Andrea Marmor and David Marmor, includes 222 prints, paintings, sculptures, and works of decorative art. The gift is made in memory of Dr. Michael Marmor’s parents, the late Drs. Katherine and Judd Marmor, who collected the art for the Foundation over the course of their lives.

Drs. Judd and Katherine Marmor began collecting art in the 1950s in Los Angeles, where they became acquainted with many prominent artists and were among the original subscribers to Gemini Graphics Editions Ltd., the innovative fine-arts printmaker. Beginning in the 1960s, Gemini published prints by many major contemporary artists who are now recognized as “modern masters.” Included in the donation are prints by Sam Francis, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol. Other major American artists whose paintings and sculptures are included in the gift are Joseph Cornell, Nancy Graves, Ed Kienholz, and Tom Wesselmann.

The relationship with the Marmor Family began in 1997 with a substantial loan from the Foundation. Since the Center’s reopening in 1999, more than a dozen installations based on loans from the Marmor Foundation have been showcased in the museum’s contemporary gallery. These installations have included one-person shows of prints by Francis, Lichtenstein, Johns, Oldenburg, and Stella, as well as thematic exhibitions such as contemporary portraiture, photography in contemporary printmaking, and the installation that is currently on view examining color in contemporary prints.
Thomas K. Seligman had this to say about the collection: “The Marmor Foundation gift brings to the Cantor Arts Center substantial works by important contemporary artists not presently represented in depth in our collection. Prints by Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol, and sculptures by Joseph Cornell and Ed Kienholz, among others, will give us the capacity to teach about contemporary printmaking and modern art, particularly on the West Coast. We are delighted that the Marmor Family wants to continue to see these works at Stanford where they can be used for teaching as well as the enjoyment of our audiences.”

Dr. Katherine Marmor, who died in 1999, and Dr. Judd Marmor, who died in 2003, were donors to several Los Angeles museums including the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Marmors often hosted art lovers in their home. They believed that art should be both educational and enjoyable, a sentiment shared by Dr. Michael Marmor and his family. The Center’s curator of modern and contemporary art has worked closely with several Stanford University student interns to catalogue and exhibit the works from the Foundation. The gift has enabled Stanford students to learn about contemporary printshops, printmaking, the print market, and contemporary art.

In addition to the gift of art, the Marmor Foundation has established a fund to support the use of the collection and to promote its educational programs.