An eye-popping virtual reality tour of a billionaire collector’s townhouse at Penn’s Arthur Ross Gallery

The “After Modernism” exhibit at the Arthur Ross Gallery inside the Fisher Fine Arts Library on Penn’s campus is a quick, free show. The landmark Frank Furness building, which houses the gallery, is worth a visit in itself.

The exhibit is curated from the collection of Hubert Neumann under the direction of Professor Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, with assistance from the students in her “The Art of Art Collecting” seminar co-taught with Peter Decherney.

Shaw notes that if you Google the name of Hubert Neumann, 93, you’ll find quite an interesting backstory on the collection. There’s a Wall Street Journal story in which Neumann said the $1 billion collection was ruining his family’s lives, and a New York Post Page 6 story that featured security camera photographs of Neumann, then 86, in handcuffs inside his New York City brownstone, surrounded by his cascading artwork. The billionaire’s son-in-law had called the police after a feud over the collection got violent.

When you’re at the Arthur Ross Gallery exhibit, you’ll feel like you’re going through that five-story townhouse, art crammed on every surface. The exhibit’s virtual reality component allows you to traipse up and down the five eye-popping floors of Neumann’s home.

You can hover over the Jean-Michel Basquiat and Jim Dine paintings in his bedroom (near the treadmill), or linger over his pleasingly messy desk with a Warhol soup can and a Tom Wesselmann nude nearby. Put on the headset, and don’t miss this part of the exhibition. (For the noobs, D’Andre Rivera, the security officer at the front desk, is extremely knowledgeable and helpful.)

Shaw said she and her colleague, a cinema media studies professor, really wanted to document “what the collection inside the house looked like on Oct. 19, 2024,” the day they used a Matterport 3D camera and student iPhones to create the virtual reality experience in conjunction with Agora World Inc.

“When we went up to meet with him, we were just floored by the house and everything in it,” she said. “As an art historian I was really struck by the family’s story. They started collecting in the 1940s.”

Neumann graduated from Wharton in 1952. The family made its money in the cosmetics business, and traveled to Europe to buy compounds for perfumes. That’s where they started buying art. The collection, which is about 3,000 pieces and fills several warehouses, has only rarely been exhibited (other than in the pages of the New York Post and Wall Street Journal).

Inside the Arthur Ross Gallery are 56 pieces selected mostly by the students from a list of art that the Neumanns were willing to lend. (“The Andy Warhol and Basquiat weren’t going to come,” Shaw said.)

The eclectic exhibit, which hangs salon style on four walls, includes pieces by artists including Picasso, Miro, Matisse, Jeff Koons, Keith Haring, Danny Farrell, and Nina Chanel Abney. And two Penn alumni artists: Patricia Renee’ Thomas and Allison Zuckerman.

Shaw says the collection reflects an expansive and lively vision which the Neumanns brought to their collecting, marked by “the thread that runs through the show of Dada and surrealism and psychedelic visions that artists are still having.”

“The Neumanns are into what it means to be human and move through this world and also to have a fantastic and expansive cosmic vision,” she said. “There’s something for everybody in this show. The power of the salon hang makes it challenging to focus on one thing, but you get to see a lot.”

“After Modernism: Selections from the Neumann Family Collection” is on view through April 13 at Arthur Ross Gallery (in the Fisher Fine Arts Library Building), University of Pennsylvania, 220 S. 34 St., Phila.