The Cantor Arts Center sits at Museum Way and Lomita Drive on the Stanford campus. Its full name is the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University. It charges no admission. The museum says it welcomes some 200,000 visitors a year to its 24 galleries, and its collections hold more than 38,000 works spanning 5,000 years.

From private museum to ruins and back

Leland and Jane Stanford opened the Leland Stanford Jr. Museum in 1894. It was filled with art and antiquities they had collected on their travels, and Wikipedia says it was the largest privately owned museum in the world by the turn of the century. The 1906 earthquake destroyed the Roman, Egyptian and Asian galleries and damaged three-quarters of the building beyond repair. The museum closed in 1945 for an inventory and reopened in 1954.

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake closed it again. A $36.8 million rebuild added a seismic retrofit and a new 42,000-square-foot wing, and the museum reopened in late 1999 under the Cantor name.

The Rodins

The B. Gerald Cantor Rodin Sculpture Garden opened in 1985. With 199 works, most of them bronze, the Cantor holds the largest Rodin collection outside Paris and the Soumaya Museum in Mexico City. In 2024 the Washington Post ranked it among the five best college art museums in the country. The museum also runs an outdoor art program, with sculpture installed all across campus.

The Anderson Collection next door

In 2011 the Anderson family of Atherton gave Stanford 121 paintings and sculptures, mostly postwar American art, including Jackson Pollock's Lucifer. The Anderson Collection opened in its own building next to the Cantor in 2014, and it is also free.

Hours and parking

The museum lists these hours: Monday and Friday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed Tuesday and Wednesday. Parking is limited and paid through ParkMobile. Tootsie's at the Cantor serves lunch and afternoon tea, plus a prix fixe dinner on Thursdays. Professional and portrait photo shoots aren't allowed, and groups of 10 or more should register ahead.