What are the opening hours?

Monday 11am - 5pm Thursday 11am - 5pm Friday 11am - 5pm Saturday 11am - 5pm Sunday 11am - 5pm

Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University

Home
United States
Stanford, CA
Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University

Admission is always free! Open Thursday - Monday 🖼️ Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. We strive to make art accessible and engaging for all.
(638)

06/18/2026

Opening July 2, “JANE!”

“JANE!” celebrates the aesthetic and affective excesses of Jane Stanford, the Gilded Age founder and matriarch of Stanford University. Bringing together precious keepsakes, souvenirs, and spooky messages from beyond the grave, the exhibition reveals the campy underside of a familiar biography and perhaps an even more familiar murder mystery.

From her elegant French gowns to a colossal painting of her jewels, from the Egyptian artifacts she acquired for her ﬂedgling museum to a container of her beauty cream excavated from her Palo Alto mansion destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earth-quake, “JANE!” presents various idiosyncratic artifacts of Stanford lore—many of them shown for the very ﬁrst time—and very probably for the last.

📍Stanford Family Room
🗓️ July 2, 2026–May 18, 2028

🖼️Napoleon T. Sarony, Portrait of Jane Lathrop Stanford, 1871

For more information, visit: https://museum.stanford.edu/exhibitions/jane See less

06/17/2026

⚽ In town for FIFA this weekend?

If you're looking for another stop on your visit, the Cantor Arts Center is open all weekend. Before or after the match, explore our galleries, discover world-class art, and enjoy a moment of inspiration.

Admission is always free.

06/16/2026

🎓Congratulations to the Graduates!

We were delighted to see this spirited group of new Stanford graduates at the university's 2026 Commencement on Sunday, sporting costumes inspired by Deborah Kass's iconic sculpture "OY/YO" at Cantor.

They were participating in the Wacky Walk, Stanford's untraditional commencement tradition in which graduating seniors parade in homemade costumes ranging from the satirical to the sublime—and sometimes delightfully silly.

To watch a video of this year's Wacky Walk and learn more about "OY/YO", click the link in bio.

Do you have your own photos with this "OY/YO"? Post them and tag us at for a chance to be featured on our social media channels!📸✨

06/15/2026

We 💕 our visitors! Share your museum moments with us by tagging after your next visit 🏛

📸 , , ,

06/14/2026

🎭 Places, everyone.

Behind the scenes, preparations are underway for our newest exhibition. 👸

Stay tuned—our official exhibition announcement arrives later this week. 🗓

If you're curious, you can discover more through the link in our bio.🕵️‍♂️

06/13/2026

Our preferred summer reading 📚

Take your favorite works home with you from our current exhibitions, 'Jeremy Frey: Woven' and 'Animal, Vegetable, nor Mineral: Works by Miljohn Ruperto,' by purchasing an exhibition catalogue in our lobby!

Perfect as a gift for dads and grads! Snag a copy during your next visit 👀

06/12/2026

Cantor Highlights in Chinese

Sunday, Jun 14: 2-3 pm, Explore Cantor's collections, all in Chinese, with a museum engagement guide who will lead you through a selection of works from different cultures and time periods.

Participants are welcome to join the conversation and share their thoughts on themes explored throughout the tour, but are also free to engage at their own comfort level.

Tours are free of charge but require advance registration.

For more information, click the link in bio.

🖼️Vairochana, China, Ming dynasty (1368-1644)

Vairochana (the "Illuminator," literally "Coming from the Sun") is one of five Transcendent or Dyani Buddhas. Here, he is depicted as described in the Brahmajalasutra, seated upon a lotus with 1,000 petals that emit 100,000 Buddhas, each of whom will teach the doctrine to a different universe.

06/11/2026

Did you know one of the most iconic LGBTQ+ monuments in New York City actually made its home on a California college campus first?

George Segal’s "Gay Liberation sculpture was finished in 1980 to honor the 10th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. He cast molds of real gay couples he knew in casually intimate moments.

It was supposed to be installed in Christopher Park, NYC, across from the Stonewall Inn, but NYC politics delayed it for 12 years. Peter Putnam, who commissioned the sculpture through the Mildred Andrews Fund, wanted to see the sculpture displayed. He was a prominent physicist and philosopher with ties to Stanford, so he donated a casting to the university, which then installed it in 1984.

NYC finally received and installed its original casting of the sculpture on June 23, 1992.

📍 How to find it from the museum: It's not far away at all! Just head straight south from the Cantor Arts Center front steps down Lomita Mall. You will spot the white-lacquered figures sitting on a bench and standing right between Buildings 370 and 380 of the Main Quad.

Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈✨

🖼Ted Eytan/L.A. Cicero

06/10/2026

Did you know these 12 images in "Animal, Vegetable, nor Mineral" were modeled after plants that might not even exist?

Miljohn Ruperto and his collaborator Ulrik Heltoft found inspiration in unrecognizable botanical illustrations in the Voynich Manuscript, an undecipherable 16th century text. Ruperto and Heltoft digitally recreated the drawings in 3D and added lifelike textures before transferring the images to 4 x 5-inch negatives and printing them on gelatin silver photographic paper 📸

The resulting photographs resemble Karl Blossfeldt’s early 20th-century botanical photographs, which sought to reveal the inherent beauty of nature; we're lucky to have one of Blossfeldt photos in our collection 🌱 Here, Ruperto and Heltoft wanted to create something that frustrated these recognizable aesthetic formulas and remained mysterious even to them.

Learn more about the exhibition by registering for a FREE curator talk tomorrow at 12 at the link in our bio 🎞

[Miljohn Ruperto and Ulrik Heltoft, Voynich Botanical Studies, 2012-ongoing. Gelatin silver prints on fiber-based paper. Courtesy of the artists, Micki Meng Gallery, San Francisco, and Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai. Karl Blossfeldt, Aristolochia specialis; Birthwort, Young Shoot, Enlarged Eight Times, 1915. Gelatin silver print. Gift of the Fraenkel Gallery, Cantor Arts Center permanent collection.]

06/09/2026

🐾 Remembering Tootsie Jane

On Dog Memorial Day, we're celebrating one of Stanford's most beloved companions: Tootsie Jane, the cherished dog of founders Jane Stanford and Leland Stanford. Her namesake is honored perhaps most visibly in the name of Tootsie's Café at the Cantor.

Do you have a dog that has left a lasting pawprint on you? Share their name below. ❤️

🖼Tootsie, 1889, Andrew Putnam Hill
🖼Portrait of Jane Lathrop Stanford, 1902, Salviati & Co.

Address

328 Lomita Drive
Stanford, CA
94305

Opening Hours

Monday	11am - 5pm
Thursday	11am - 5pm
Friday	11am - 5pm
Saturday	11am - 5pm
Sunday	11am - 5pm

Telephone

+16507234177

Website

https://linktr.ee/cantorartscenter

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Address
Telephone
Opening Hours
Alerts
Contact The Establishment
Claim ownership or report listing

Want your establishment to be the top-listed Arts & Entertainment in Stanford?