Experience the arts at Stanford without being on campus

From listening to watching to learning, here are ways to access remote arts experiences.

By Robin Wander

Stanford continues to offer guidance as part of its response to COVID-19, which includes the cancellation of public arts programs and events across campus. Additionally, the Anderson Collection and the Cantor Arts Center are temporarily closed to the public.

The arts play an important role in the community and there are ways that patrons and visitors on and off campus can continue to listen, learn, view and make art without being on campus. The following podcasts, videos, slideshows, digital showcases and online courses are some of the alternatives to in-person arts experiences. More can be found at arts @ home.

For the latest information from Stanford about its response to COVID-19, please visit healthalerts.stanford.edu.

Virtually there

Terry Berlier, artist and associate professor, brought together her interest in queerness and ecologies in I am what I am not yet, a solo exhibition at the Stanford Art Gallery. Using abstract labored forms, kinetic and sound sculpture, her work suggests a path of reorienting to the world, turning things around so they can be understood differently.

Click on the slideshow of her exhibition and other slideshows below.

Terry Berlier: I am what I am not yet

These images are from Terry Berlier’s exhibition I am what I am not yet in the Stanford Art Gallery. Berlier’s works call attention to forced invisibility and attempts to see oneself, to be seen, as they address the small and particular ways we move, delineate and protect ourselves amidst environmental and political crises.

Afro Pop dancing with a master

For a dance student, the master class is a rare and treasured opportunity. It is a chance not only to observe an expert demonstrating a particular art but also to physically engage with the expert. Over 20 Stanford students had that opportunity in Roble Gym with Afro Pop dance master Philip Amo Agyapong.

Layer Cake: First-year MFA exhibition

Installation images from Layer Cake in the Coulter Art Gallery are featured in this slideshow. The exhibition includes works by five first-year MFA students in art practice, Amy Elkins, Gabriella Grill, Joshua Moreno, Miguel Novelo and Gregory Rick.

Picturing Valentine’s Day

Artwork and objects on the Stanford campus that evoke the rituals and romance of Valentine’s Day, from candy to kissing and dining to dancing, are featured in this slideshow.

Listen up

Three large nave windows in Memorial Church were painstakingly restored by Clerkin Higgins Stained Glass of New York City. In Mary Clerkin Higgins’ 2015 podcast, she addresses problems encountered in the conservation treatment and highlights the skills of the artist and artisans who created the windows.

Click on this podcast and other listening options below.

Angels in the architecture: Restoring the stained glass of Stanford Memorial Church

Mary Clerkin Higgins is an award-winning artist and conservator who has worked in stained glass for 39 years. She has written about and restored glass from the 12th century to the present for numerous museums and institutions. Listen to her podcast about conserving stained glass panels in Memorial Church.

SLSQ: The complete Haydn Opus 20 string quartets

Ensemble-in-residence the St. Lawrence String Quartet is at the forefront of intellectual life at Stanford. The quartet frequently performs at Stanford Live, hosts an annual chamber music seminar and runs the Emerging String Quartet Program through which it mentors the next generation of young quartets. Stream or download the high-resolution (96/24) Haydn digital album here.

Professor Gavin Jones on writer John Steinbeck

Writer John Steinbeck attended Stanford University, off and on, from the fall of 1919 to the spring of 1925, when he left without completing his degree. In his podcast, Gavin Jones, the Rehmus Family Professor in the Humanities, says Steinbeck’s interest in race and poverty, in marine biology and ecology, and in the fate of humankind on a precarious planet were all inspired by his time on the Farm.

KZSU 90.1 FM

KZSU is Stanford University’s radio station, broadcasting across the Bay Area on 90.1 FM and across the world at kzsulive.stanford.edu. The station staff is all volunteer, made up of Stanford students, staff, alumni and community affiliates. One of the regular programs is Wednesday Night Live, which features live local bands in the studio each week from 9 to 10 p.m.

Nathan Oliveira: Bay Area figurative movement artist and professor of art at Stanford

The Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program conducted two interviews with artist Nathan Oliveira in January and May 2009. In these excerpts from the interviews, Oliveira discusses his career at Stanford, which began in 1964 with an invitation from Lorenz Eitner, then chair of the Stanford Department of Art.

Digital showcases

The exhibition The Melancholy Museum: Love, Death, and Mourning at Stanford involved reinstalling objects in the Stanford Family Galleries at the Cantor Arts Center in conjunction with the 125th anniversary of the museum. The exhibition includes over 700 objects collected by Leland Stanford Jr. and his parents. These items tell the story of the culture of grief that was very much a part of the Gilded Age that the Stanford family inhabited.

Click on this multimedia presentation and others below.

Mark Dion’s The Melancholy Museum

Learn how artist Mark Dion, the 2019-20 Diekman Contemporary Commissions Program Artist, spent more than a year culling through the over 6,000 objects in the original Stanford Family Collections to create an exhibition that explores young Leland’s collection – he already was an avid and curious collector at the time of his death – as well as important narratives related to the Stanford family.

Everybody

Go behind the scenes of the Department of Theater and Performance Studies Winter Main Stage production, Everybody, the 2018 Pulitzer Prize-nominated play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Directed by Michael Rau, assistant professor and TAPS artistic director, this modern riff on the 15th-century morality play Everyman follows Everybody (chosen from among the cast by lottery at each performance) as they journey through life’s greatest mystery – the meaning of living.

Recordings by Christopher Costanza: The cello suites of J.S. Bach

This website features recordings by Christopher Costanza, cellist with the St. Lawarence String Quartet, Stanford’s ensemble-in-residence, as well as commentary by Costanza and other scholarly Bach-related materials. 

REVIVAL: Millennial reMembering in the Afro NOW

REVIVAL is an Afro Futurist devised dance theater work, inspired by the founding of the Committee on Black Performing Arts and co-produced by the Department of Theater and Performance Studies, the Stanford Institute for Diversity in the Arts, BLACKstage and Stanford Arts Intensive. This content documents the 2019 live performance and its creation process.

Talking heads

In 2018, Allyson Hobbs, associate professor of history, taught a 1-unit interdisciplinary undergraduate course Hamilton: An American Musical that explored why Alexander Hamilton and the contemporary musical based on his life resonate so profoundly with the American public. Hobbs co-taught the course with faculty in the departments of English, History, Music, and Theater and Performance studies, and the Program in Writing and Rhetoric, each providing a different perspective on the man and the musical. Hobbs and her co-teachers share a taste of the popular course with perspectives on history, casting and music in this video.

Click on the videos below to hear from experts, scholars and artists.

Perspectives on Hamilton

Stanford faculty share their perspectives on the history, casting and music of the Broadway phenomenon Hamilton and discuss the popular Stanford course Hamilton: An American Musical.

Stanford Art & Art History: Past, present and the future

Mona Duggan, deputy director, emerita, of the Cantor Arts Center, talks about when the Department of Art and the Stanford Museum were joined; and Alexander Nemerov, the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities, and chair of the Department of Art and Art History, talks about the present and future state of the department.

Meet the TAPS faculty

In these five-minute videos, nine members of the Department of Theater and Performance Studies talk about their backgrounds, their interests and why they teach.

Lorna Simpson and Darren Walker

Artists on the Future is a conversation series that pairs artists with cultural thought leaders from various fields to talk about issues vital to our society. This video from 2019 features artist Lorna Simpson in conversation with Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation.

Learning anywhere, anytime

The mission of Stanford Continuing Studies is to share the rich educational resources of Stanford University with adult students, to nurture a vibrant learning community, to nourish the life of the mind and to promote the pleasures of intellectual exploration. Among the offerings in the spring are several arts and creative writing courses. Thanks to the flexibility of the online format, these courses can be taken anywhere, anytime.

Click below for spring arts and creative writing course descriptions.

The Creative Habit: Cultivating a Daily Writing Practice

Even if you can barely remember the last time you wrote anything beyond an email, a text or a grocery list, the seeds of creativity are still deep inside you and need only a little coaxing to flourish again. This course is based on the notion that it takes 21 days to form a habit, and the fact that writing just a little every day will take away the anxiety of the blank page and make you more observant, more in touch with your creativity and, as a result, happier and more fulfilled.

Explorations in Mixed Media: Unleashing Creativity Through Daily Practice

This course is designed for students of all levels who want to enrich themselves by having a creative art practice in their daily lives. Unlike a traditional art studio course, this five-week intensive will guide participants through daily exercises in which the focus is spending more time making and less time analyzing.

The Poet’s Way

Poetry can be found in the simplest images and experiences, and need not be intimidating or difficult to understand. Walt Whitman wrote, “I celebrate myself and sing myself,” and in this course we will aim to celebrate ourselves in writing. Designed for experienced and beginning poets alike, we will create a safe and inspiring space in which to explore the poet within.

Travel Photography: Around the Corner and Around the World

This course will explore how to translate the fundamentals of photography in a way that conveys a sense of place. We will discuss how to create expressive landscapes, environmental portraits and photo essays that reveal your unique impression of a destination. From focal-length lenses to practicing techniques, student will evolve their unique photographic vision.

Publishing Fiction: A Playful, Community-Based Approach

This course will offer fiction writers best practices for finding their places in the great ecosystem of journal and book publishing. We will transform your search for publishing partners into a cooperative game with custom-designed strategies to find the best matches between your work and the available venues.