Gallery Seen

Discussion delves into the stories behind the collectors, artists, and artworks in the Collecting the New Irascibles: Art in the 1980s exhibitionat the Arthur Ross Gallery

February 24, 2026

A video recording of the online webinar with exhibition curator Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw and David Galperin of Sotheby’s is now available.

The online webinar on Feb. 18 included a tour of Collecting the New Irascibles: Art in the 1980s and a discussion about the exhibition between (clockwise from upper right) Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw of the Arthur Ross Gallery and David Galperin of Sotheby’s, moderated by Emilie C.K. LaRosa, of Penn Alumni Lifelong Learning.

The Arthur Ross Gallery’s current exhibition, Collecting the New Irascibles: Art in the 1980s, was the featured February event in the Global Discovery Series, sponsored by Penn Alumni Lifelong Learning. A video recording of the Feb. 18 webinar is available on Vimeo.

More than 250 people registered for the live online session, which began with an in-gallery introduction and tour by exhibition curator Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Penn History of Art Professor and Inaugural Faculty Director of the Arthur Ross Gallery. A discussion followed with Shaw and David Galperin, Vice Chairman and Head of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s in New York, a 2013 graduate of Penn’s College of Arts & Sciences and the Wharton School. Their lively conversation, followed by a Q&A, touched on several topics, including the histories of the collector families, the relationships between the collectors and the artists, and the stories behind individual artworks in the exhibition, most on public view for the first time.

Collecting the New Irascibles: Art in the 1980s, featuring 32 artworks by 22 artists on loan from five families of collectors, is on view through April 12, 2026.