October 9, 2026, 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm

When Barnes-Jewish Hospital commissioned watercolor paintings for the patient rooms of its new Plaza West Tower, they turned to St. Louis artist Erin Blumer. The brief: create original works rooted in the botanical life of the city, one set of paintings for each of the tower’s 12 patient floors, each floor representing a different garden or natural area. Blumer spent a year visiting Forest Park, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and Shaw Nature Reserve, observing plants through their peak seasons and translating what she found into 34 original watercolors. Those paintings now live, as large-format reproductions, on the walls of patient rooms throughout the tower.

This exhibition brings the original works together, alongside 12 new paintings created specifically for this show. The full collection spans prairies, woodland gardens, iris beds, and native shade plantings, all rendered in Blumer’s characteristic style, where careful observation and abstract qualities of light, texture, and color work together. If you’ve been a patient at Plaza West Tower, you may recognize some of these paintings. If you haven’t, this is a rare chance to see the originals up close.