Current Exhibitions
Joel Christian Gill: Illustration
June 27 – August 2, 2025
Cartoonist Joel Christian Gill blends history with humor to bring American stories to life. Gill boldly addresses difficult topics — slavery, abuse, poverty, and racism — and infuses them with creativity and wit. His ability to approach these heavy subjects with humor allows for moments of levity, making them accessible to a wider audience without diminishing their significance. Through his comics, Gill evokes a range of powerful emotions, from empathy and heartbreak to joy and hope.
Gill earned his B.A. from Roanoke College and his M.F.A. from Boston University. He currently serves as Associate Professor of Illustration at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. His memoir Fights: One Boy’s Triumph Over Violence was cited as one of the best graphic novels of 2020 by The New York Times and was awarded the 2021 Cartoonist Studio Prize.
This exhibition is guest curated by Lissa Cramer, Director of the Boston University Art Galleries.
Cece Bell: Animal Albums from A to Z
July 17 – September 21, 2025
Children’s book Animal Albums from A to Z by author and artist Cece Bell is an elaborate and loving homage to classic album cover art. This exhibition displays all 26 of the original collaged album covers as well as Bell’s handmade memorabilia, set pieces, and costumes featured in the albums’ music videos. Bell’s books include Rabbit and Robot: The Sleepover, Chick and Brain: Smell My Foot!, and Newbery Honor Book and Eisner Award winner El Deafo. She has also created books with her husband, Tom Angleberger, including Crankee Doodle and the Inspector Flytrap series. Bell lives and works in southwestern Virginia.
Cece Bell: Animal Albums from A to Z and its related programs are sponsored in part by the City of Roanoke through the Roanoke Arts Commission.
IMAGE: Cece Bell, cover of of Animal Albums from A to Z, 2024. 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
Leigh Ann Beavers: We Had All This
August 21 – December 7, 2025
Leigh Ann Beavers’ exhibition explores ecological concerns and the valley’s changing landscape. Beavers’ background as a naturalist informs her artistic practice as she documents regional animals slowly becoming endangered or going extinct, and landscapes of indigenous flora disappearing through human intervention—intentional or otherwise.
White Zinnia: A New Dance Work by Penelope Freeh with 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.”