玛丽玛格丽特“Moo” Anderson who, with her late husband Harry “Hunk” Anderson, built one of the most important collections of American modern and contemporary art in private hands, died Tuesday, Oct. 22, at her home on the Peninsula.

Her death was confirmed Thursday, Oct. 24, by the Anderson Collection at Stanford University, a museum showing the core of their collection. No cause was given. She was 92.

The Andersons liked to portray themselves as plain folk to befit their shared nickname “Hunk and Moo,” but they were sophisticated and timely in their collecting of artworks that were often abstract and beyond comprehension. They were also generous in both loaning and donating pieces to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Five years ago, the Anderson Collection at Stanford University opened next to Cantor Arts Center, the main campus museum. Since then, the two buildings have become major art destinations, drawing 250,000 visitors a year. Though Hunk Anderson, with his military flattop and folksy style, was the face of the operation, Moo was just as active in the partnership.

“This has been a family affair from the beginning,” said Jason Linetzky, director of the Anderson Collection. “Moo led from the heart and was a lifelong learner, endlessly inquisitive, kind and generous.”

Hunk Anderson diedin February 2018 at age 95. The Andersons were married for 68 years.

玛丽玛格丽特Ransford was born Nov. 1, 1926, in Boston, where she grew up. She attended D’Youville College in Buffalo, N.Y., and went by a different nickname, Murma, when she met her future husband at the Seneca Yacht Club in the summer of 1948.

On one of their first dates, Anderson garbled the name “Murma” when introducing her to a friend named Moose. He heard her name as “Moo Moo” not “Murma” and it was Moo from that point on, according to her granddaughter Devin Pence.

Hunk and Moo were married in 1950.

By then Anderson and two partners had started a venture to improve dormitory food service and it soon expanded across the country. The company, Saga Corp., moved to Menlo Park, which is what brought the Andersons west in 1964.

The company went public in the 1970s and was eventually acquired by Marriott. Neither Anderson had ever studied art but during a trip to Europe, they were simultaneously swept away by the French Impressionists.

Their first purchases were by Picasso and by Matisse, but in the late 1960s, they switched to postmodern American art. Their timing was right. It was still a buyer’s market for the New York school works they sought out — Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Clyfford Still, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol.

Their collection eventually grew to 1,400 works, worth hundreds of millions. It was loaned to museums, displayed in the halls of Saga Corp. and hung on the walls of their own home, which they offered up for tours. One of the most important Pollock drip paintings, “Lucifer,” from 1947, hung for years above the bed of their daughter, Mary Patricia “Putter” Anderson Pence.

Their collection was showcased in the major exhibition “Celebrating Modern Art: the Anderson Collection,” which ran from 2000 to 2001 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Neal Benezra, director of SFMOMA, described donations from the Andersons as “foundational works in our collection,” including pieces by Johns, Lichtenstein and Robert Indiana. For instance, a donated work by Rauschenberg became the centerpiece of a definitive holding of the artist’s work at SFMOMA.

Benezra also credited the Andersons with helping launch his career, when he was a doctoral student at Stanford and was hired as their private curator in 1980.

“They trained me for a museum career and were instrumental in helping me get my first job as a museum curator at the Des Moines Arts Center,” Benezra said. “Moo was a lovely, generous and thoughtful person, and we will miss her.”

The Anderson Graphic Arts Collection has 761 works on paper and a designated gallery at the de Young Museum.

Moo Anderson’s philosophy was “to enjoy art it must be shared,” Linetzky said, and that was a primary impetus behind gifting the collection to Stanford. The best 121 pieces, including works by Pollock, Richard Diebenkon,Wayne Thiebaud, Willem de Kooning and Stella, were donated to open the Anderson Collection in 2014 in a building that was paid for by Stanford and private donors.

Moo Anderson was also part-owner of 3EP, an art publishing workshop in Palo Alto, and volunteered at Sacred Heart Schools in Atherton and St. Francis Center of Redwood City, which provides aid to the poor. In later years, she taught children atArt in Action, a Menlo Park nonprofit.

She was also a golfer who belonged to the Sharon Heights Golf & Country Club and recorded three holes-in-one, according to Devin Pence.

The Andersons were often honored by museums but never showy. The closest they would come was driving their white 1979 Volkswagen Beetle with the top down in the annual July 4 parade at their vacation home in Glenbrook, on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.

“她是一个容易发怒的女人与一个巨大的心脏,”她哒ughter, Putter Pence, said by email. “Always eager to embrace new artists and still collecting art until the day she died.”

Moo Anderson served on the board of the Anderson Collection and regularly dropped in for visits or to attend programs until her death. Most recently, she attended the fifth-anniversary celebration of the Anderson Collection on Sept. 20. As always, she played down her own importance.

“It was always a capital A for Art and a small a for Anderson,” Linetzky said. “She was humble, generous, kind and witty.”

Survivors include daughter PutterPence andand grandaughter Devin Pence, both of Los Angeles. A memorial Mass will be private.

Donations in Moo Anderson’s name may be made to St. Francis Center, 151 Buckingham Ave., Redwood City, CA 94063.