Art Gallery at Holden Arboretum
Explore your artistic side.
An art gallery located inside the Warren H. Corning Visitor Center hosts a regular rotation of artwork by regional artists from March through October.
Criteria for artwork is that it fulfills our mission to connect people with the wonder, beauty, and value of trees and plants.
Many of the artworks are available for sale through our Treehouse Store.
On Display Now Through february 26, 2023
Works of Love by Edna Dolfinger Stillwell
A note from the artist’s grandson, Ted Leigh:
My grandmother, Edna Dolfinger Stillwell (1884-1974), was the daughter of a fine China and glassware merchant in Louisville, KY. Like other daughters of the privileged, she was educated at a girl’s “Academy” near her home in Louisville, an education that would have included drawing. Remarkably for a woman of her age, she was the president of the Louisville Craft Guild and exhibited at The Art Institute of Chicago. Her sister, Emma, earned a BA and MA, became a suffragette and a children’s health advocate. Comparing herself to her accomplished sister, Edna called herself the “play-baby,” echoing the prevailing American prejudice that because art was “impractical” it was frivolous. She would become a corporate wife and devoted gardener.
Each of these expressive plant studies are of flowers associated with Christmas legends; the drawings, reduced to card size and hand painted, were sent to friends and family. They testify to her generosity, love of flowers and artistic talent. Both Edna and my mother, Jane Leigh, were longtime members and supporters of the Holden Arboretum (as is my sister, Carolyn Patterson).
