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The Art of Art Collecting course culminated in the exhibition “After Modernism: Selections from the Neumann Collection,” on view at the Arthur Ross Gallery. Photo by Eric Sucar.

February 3, 2025

The practice of art collection as a collaboration: As part of an undergraduate course, Penn faculty and students curated an Arthur Ross Gallery exhibition of works from the Neumann family’s extensive collection of modern and contemporary art.

By Louise Shepard | January 27, 2025 | Penn Today

In a clear case in Penn’s Arthur Ross Gallery is a plaster piece of cheesecake topped with enameled red cherries, a few scattered on the metal pie tin. It is a whimsical sculpture created by artist Claes Oldenberg in 1962 as a gift to collector Hubert Neumann. The story behind the confection is detailed on a wall label written by a Penn student, an aspect of a one-of-a-kind curatorial course made possible by a partnership with the Neumann family.

In "The Art of Art Collecting," an interdisciplinary SNF Paideia Program class, students examined the extensive collection of modern and contemporary art that the Neumann family has developed over four generations.

The collaboration between the students and Neumann culminated in the exhibition, “After Modernism: Selections from the Neumann Collection,” on view at the Gallery through March 2. The 56 modernist and contemporary artworks were selected from more than 3,000 objects the family has collected since 1948. A 57th, the 60-foot-long 2012 painting by Nina Chanel Abney, “I Dread to Think,” is on view at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.

“I honestly think that we’ve made history here because we want to bring the University into the arts in ways that I think are needed in the art world,” said Hubert Neumann, 93, at the exhibition opening, attended by an estimated 250 people. “I think that the University has done something historic, and I’m just very fortunate to be part of this.”

The exhibition’s curator is one of two Penn faculty who created and taught the undergraduate course, Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw, history of art professor in the School of Arts & Sciences, and inaugural faculty director of the Arthur Ross Gallery.

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