Study leave

On Thursdays Denise volunteers at the Cantor Art Gallery at Stanford University. The campus has a lot of public art and buildings of interest so as it's a lovely hot day I go along to have a look around. I start with the casts of Rodin sculptures decorating the approach to the gallery, where Denise drops me off. It's exciting to be able to get so close. 

The first building I tackle is the Hoover Tower, named after Hoover the former president, and it's a good place to get the measure of the campus, much of which is built in the Mission style with shaded cloisters and leafy squares. It seems to stretch as far as the distant hills. These students are privileged indeed. On the ground floor of the tower is a small museum that fills me in on the lives of Herbert and Lou Hoover.


Near the Tower is an art gallery that changes its exhibitions regularly in order to show off its extensive collection. I'm most absorbed by a documentary on Frida Kahlo and end up chatting with the woman on the desk about the craziness of how inferior Kahlo felt as an artist next to Rivera, and yet, whose art has endured? I wander about in the sun and while there are plenty of youngsters marching past purposefully clutching papers, or cheerleaders riding by on bicycles, or kids who are barely shaving being shown around, I do find the occasional student taking time out, like this one snoozing in the shade of the palm fronds.
I take a lunch break at a table in front of the law school and eavesdrop on students discussing internships, subjects, holidays… It's a real international crowd, the world's elite.
In the university's memorial chapel there's an organ recital providing a most musical backdrop to my visit. The chapel's toilet wins the most artistic window award. How weird am I, I think, as I take a photo from my seated vantage point (not that weird, I discover later, when Denise's colleague confesses to doing exactly the same).

Denise shows me round the Cantor collection, with Japanese kimonos and Chinese slippers, American art, older European stuff and large-scale outdoor pieces by Richard Long on the balcony (the stone circle is not my favourite of his pieces), Richard Serra down in the courtyard and Anthony Gormley's snake wall in the trees beside the gallery.





We drive to Palo Alto town centre, swinging by the garage where William R Hewlett and David Packard began developing their first product, the audio oscillator, in 1938. This spot is generally recognised as the birthplace of Silicon Valley and is now a historic landmark.

We meet up with Bill at the Stanford cinema, which is hosting a Fifties film festival, and watch 20 Million Miles to Earth. Following a musical introduction on the organ, the movie delights with makeshift monsters, clunky dialogue and even a romance shoehorned into the science fiction, presumably to keep the ladies happy.



We eat at the latest trendy taco spot, Tacolicious, packed out with kids from the campus drinking tequila, or at least the ones who have fake ID.