Current Exhibitions
Leigh Ann Beavers: We Had All This
August 21 – December 6, 2025
For decades, artist Leigh Ann Beavers has straddled the worlds of natural history and visual art. She depends on close observation and the repetition of looking and drawing to better understand her environs. Having lived in western Virginia much of her life, Beavers notices and keenly feels the diminishing and disappearance of the unseen and undervalued life on the edges of yards, fields, and roadsides. Her most recent body of work continues her artistic exploration of ecological concerns and the valley’s changing landscape.
Beavers currently serves on the studio arts faculty of Washington & Lee University in Lexington, VA, teaching courses in drawing, printmaking, eco art, and comics. Her background as a naturalist informs her art practice, and her work has been exhibited throughout the United States, England, and Ireland.
Leigh Ann Beavers: We Had All This and its related programs are sponsored in part by the City of Roanoke through the Roanoke Arts Commission.
IMAGE: Leigh Ann Beavers, We Had All This (detail), 2024-25. 224 graphite drawings. Courtesy of the artist.
Expanding Narratives: Conversations with the Collection
currently available online
Faculty members from across academic divisions have collaborated with museum staff to select works from the collection that investigate key course concepts and provide extended access to the individual works of art. Participating departments include art history, biology, classics, English, gender and women studies, history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and studio art.
Unveiling the Past: Reckoning with Our History of Enslavement at Hollins
currently available online
In spring 2020, students in the Cultural Property, Rights and Museum course began working on an exhibit, Unveiling the Past: Reckoning with Our History of Enslavement at Hollins University, in conjunction with members of the Hollins University Working Group on Slavery and Its Contemporary Legacies. The exhibit examines objects and images held by the University Archives in the Wyndham Robertson Library at Hollins University. Material researched by students are on display in this virtual exhibit. Those working on this exhibit wanted to create a public space to reckon with our Hollins past and give a forum to those who were not given a voice, name, space, or attention in the past. It is the goal of this exhibit to show the lasting effects slavery has had, and continues to have, here; and, to recognize that Hollins continues to benefit from a history of enslavement.
Exploring Visual and Conceptual Space: Student Selections from the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum
currently available online
Using selected works from the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum’s permanent collection, student curators put theory into practice in this virtual exhibit which is the culmination of the spring class, “Behind the Scenes: Principles and Practice.” As part of the class, students collaborate and share responsibility for conceptualizing, researching, designing, and interpreting a cohesive exhibition. Each student selected two works that spoke to them based on academic, personal, and aesthetic interests. The exhibit features works created by well-known artists Giovanni Battista Piranesi, John James Audubon, Käthe Kollwitz, Paul Klee, Salvador Dalí, and Andy Warhol, as well as works by Hedley Fitton, Jean Lurçat, Paule Gobillard, Eudora Welty, and others.
When placed together, these works form an image of the Eleanor D. Wilson collection as a small but artistically and historically rich collection – especially when seen through the eyes of Hollins student curators Madelyn Farrow, Faith Herrington, Sylvia Lane, Mairwen Minson, Kaiya Ortiz, Valerie Sargeant, and Maddie Zanie.
Upcoming Exhibitions
White Zinnia: A New Dance Work by Penelope Freeh with Art Installation by Ainslee Freeh
October 9-26, 2025
Dance artist and Hollins faculty member Penelope Freeh implements heightened theatricality, intimate gesture, and visual design elements to reveal deeply personal content. White Zinnia explores her mother’s iconography and characteristics (including dyslexia, left-handedness, and Alzheimer’s) as inspired by and in the setting of her mother’s visual artworks. Freeh writes, “I portray myself, my mother, a hybrid of us, and possibly, a ghost. I grapple with the remains of my mother’s abandoned visual art practice. My palette is ours.”
Cultivating History: Food, Crops, and Art
January 29 – March 21, 2026
Spanning over 200 years of botanical art and illustration, Cultivating History reflects the cross-cultural histories of various plants that have contributed to the arts and sciences as well as human history and progress. The histories of sunflowers, maize, tobacco, pineapples, peaches, and apples are linked to important social and economic issues in Virginia and the world. This exhibition is courtesy of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and supported by the Paul Mellon Fund.
Edward Steffanni: God-Shaped Hole
January 29 – April 18, 2026
Artist Edward Steffanni explores the connections between the queer body, spirituality, and nature through ceramics, printmaking, and performance. God-Shaped Hole draws parallels between the obscuring of sexual orientation and hunting in nature as the artist considers concealability and the surveillance of the queer experience. Steffanni earned his B.A. at Mount Vernon Nazarene University and his M.F.A. in printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design.
In conjunction with this exhibition, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) by Felix Gonzales-Torres will be on loan from the Art Bridges Foundation, Bentonville, AK.
2026 Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence: Dara Hartman
February 19 – May 2, 2026
Ceramic artist Dara Hartman references handmade quilts and heirlooms in her hanging sculptures and functional pottery. With a background in product and model design, she creatively combines colors and patterns. The Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence program allows Hollins University to bring a nationally recognized artist to campus every year. In residence during the spring semester, the Artist-in-Residence creates work in a campus studio and teaches a seminar open to all students.
Rachel Burgess
April 2 – June 6, 2026
New York-based printmaker Rachel Burgess creates large-scale works on paper depicting landscapes and domestic scenes. Combining elements of illustration, folk art and oil painting, she explores the way we transform everyday life into narrative. Burgess received a B.A. in literature from Yale University and an M.F.A. in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts. Her work is in public and private collections across the United States and beyond.