Temporary Exhibit: Imagining a Better World: The Nelly Toll Story
Tue, Nov 18
|Dayton
Nelly Toll was barely 10 years old when she and her mother went into hiding from Nazis occupying Lwów, Poland, in 1943. For nearly two years, they hid in a small, bare room. Intolerable boredom and ever-present fear were the catalysts to Nelly's silent play and art.
Time & Location
Nov 18, 2025, 1:57 PM – Jan 24, 2026, 11:57 AM
Dayton, 10 N Ludlow St, Dayton, OH 45402, USA
What it is about
As a young girl hiding with her mother during the Holocaust, Nelly Toll painted vivid watercolors of a world filled with joy, family, and freedom — a world she could only imagine. Through her art, she transformed fear into beauty and despair into hope.
This award-winning traveling exhibition, Imagining A Better World: The Artwork of Nelly Toll, invites visitors into Nelly’s story through her original paintings, archival photographs, and an evocative reconstruction of the small apartment where she hid during World War II. Created in collaboration with Dr. Toll, the exhibition was first developed by the Massillon Museum in Ohio, where it received the 2014 Best Exhibition of the Year from the Ohio Museums Association and the 2015 Visual Communications Award for its innovative Educator Resource.
Featuring nearly the entire collection of Nelly’s original wartime paintings — including works on loan from private and museum collections, such as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum…