Virtual event 
Presented by Penn Alumni Lifelong Learning
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This winter, the Arthur Ross Gallery presents a landmark exhibition, Collecting the New Irascibles: Art in the 1980s that opens a window onto the East Village art scene, where low rents and studio-ready lofts fostered a dynamic arts ecology fueled by fearless critics and intrepid dealers. Join curator Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, the Inaugural Faculty Director of the Arthur Ross Gallery and James and Nan Farquhar Professor of the History of Art at Penn, and David Galperin, Vice Chairman and Head of Contemporary Art for Sotheby’s New York, for a virtual tour of the show.

Unlike other exhibitions about the era, Collecting the New Irascibles argues that the East Village art scene could not have thrived without the audacious support of collectors whose deep engagement with challenging, often controversial art forged long-standing, generative relationships with the artists they championed. This exhibition brings together loans from world-renowned collections, including the Neumann, Schwartz, Spiegel-Wilks, and Schorr families, all with multiple Penn alumni in their ranks, and will feature works from such renowned artists as by Jeff Koons, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sherrie Levine, Keith Haring, Francesco Clemente, David Wojnarowicz, Cindy Sherman, Félix González-Torres, Richard Prince, Louise Lawler, and Peter Nagy, among others.

Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw is the inaugural faculty director of the Arthur Ross Gallery and the James and Nan Farquhar Professor in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. She has previously served on the faculty of Harvard University and as the Director of Research, Publications, and Scholarly Programs at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. In addition to her books, The Art of Remembering, Essays on African American Art and History, (Duke: 2024), Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker (Duke: 2004) and First Ladies of the United States (Smithsonian: 2020), she has also curated numerous exhibitions, including Portraits of a People: Picturing African Americans in the Nineteenth Century (2006), Represent: 200 Years of African American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2015), and I Dream a World: Selections from Brian Lanker’s Portraits of Remarkable Black Women, at the National Portrait Gallery.

David Galperin is Vice Chairman and Head of Contemporary Art for Sotheby’s New York. He is primarily responsible for driving strategy and business-getting for the firm’s Contemporary Art auctions. David joined Sotheby’s in 2013, quickly becoming a principal contributor to the Contemporary Art department and Head of Contemporary Art Evening Sales in 2017. In 2021, David assumed the role of Head of Contemporary Art for the Americas.

David has played a pivotal role in bringing major American collections to market, including the Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson Collection, The David M. Solinger Collection, The Macklowe Collection, The Emily Fisher Landau Collection, and the Collection of Chara Schreyer. David was instrumental in driving the exceptional outcome of The Macklowe Collection, a 100%-sold sale that achieved $922 million across 2021-2022, making it the most valuable collection ever sold at auction at the time. Throughout David’s tenure, he has continued to identify and champion important emerging markets. He has led new price discoveries and achieved world records for both historical and previously underrepresented artists such as Norman Lewis, Charles White, Romare Bearden, as well as young and mid-career artists like Jennifer Packer, Christina Quarles, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Matthew Wong, among others. David was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a joint Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts in Art History.