Hunk and Moo and their art

Sam Whiting, author of this week’s cover story on the Anderson Collection at Stanford, first met Harry W. and Margaret Anderson at a July Fourth classic-car parade in Lake Tahoe in the early 1990s.

“Itwas one of those parades with more drivers than spectators, and they came by in awhite VW convertible Beetle, with Hunk wearing a straw hat like the ones they wear at political conventions,” Whiting recalls. “Somebody said, ‘There’s Hunk and Moo.’ ”

Hewas still enjoying those nicknames when the person added that the Andersons had one of the biggest private collections of modern art in the country.

“I couldn't believe it,” Whiting says. “Theywere the two squarest people I'd ever seen.” After he met them, hewould learn that theywere “also the nicest and most down to earth.”

Twenty years later, Whiting was visiting the Anderson Collection, pressed the button for the elevator and, when the door opened, “there was Hunk, as if he were the elevator operator. He'd come to see installation of the Frank Stella.”

On the ride up, Whiting reminded Hunk about the July Fourth parade and thewhite VW. “Hunk said he is still driving in it,” Whiting says. To read more about the Andersons and their art collection, see the story on Page 14.

Nextweek: The Mill Valley Film Festival.