JANE! An intimate exploration of Gilded Age excess and the enigmatic life and death of Jane Stanford

About

Curated by Associate Curator of European Art, Patrick R. Crowley, JANE! celebrates the aesthetic and affective excesses of Jane Stanford, the Gilded Age founder and matriarch of Stanford University. Bringing together precious keepsakes, souvenirs, archaeological detritus, 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 Hawaiian skirt she may or may not have purchased immediately before her suspicious death, Jane! presents various idiosyncratic artifacts of Stanford lore—many shown for the very first time, and very likely for the last.

IMAGE: Napoleon T. Sarony, Portrait of Jane Lathrop Stanford, 1871. Photograph with charcoal touch up, 55 ½ x 45 in. Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, Stanford Family Collections, JLS.18217

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