All Together Now

At a Manhattan townhouse decorated by Russell Groves, a family of art aficionados finds that more is more.

- Stephen Wallis

Sitting in Melissa Neumann’s Manhattan living room, you can feel almost overcome—your eyes flitting from one artwork to the next, trying to take it all in. Over here a Jeff Koons sheepdog and a Futurist composition by Gino Severini. Over there classic abstractions by Joan Miró and Fernand Léger. Yet, for all the visual ping-pong, the room is actually one of the tamer spaces in the house, which is packed with a collection spanning three generations. Four, if you count the children. And this family does. “We just brought in a Kenny Scharf doughnut painting,” says Melissa, “and all three of my young kids were lobbying to put it in their room.”

Art has been embroidered into the fabric of the Neumanns’ lives ever since Melissa’s father, Hubert, and his father began buying, around 1950. Melissa and her sisters grew up surrounded with paintings and sculptures, and when she and her husband bought their latest home, there was no question it would be a showcase for art—the more the better. “This house is a cacophony,” says Hubert. “But so is the world. Why wouldn’t art, and showing art, reflect that?”