Art by Ned Smith.
For Scott Weidensaul, the Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art is more than a venue. It’s about the legacy of the center’s namesake, acclaimed wildlife artist and journalist E. Stanley “Ned” Smith of Millersburg.
Smith has been an inspiration for people like Weidensaul, who began his friendship with Smith as a young adult. Smith died in 1985, and Weidensaul became a founder, research director and long-time volunteer at the center that now bears Smith’s name.
“Ned Smith was my hero. I fell in love with his art as a kid,” said Weidensaul, a Schuylkill County native. “He was such a voracious consumer of natural history and an extremely talented natural history writer and illustrator. He had no formal education but was a lifelong learner. He was one of the premiere nature artists of the 20th century.”
The center is a nonprofit founded in 1993. It was originally located in the Daniel Miller House in Millersburg but relocated in 2004 to its current home off Water Company Road. The 535-acre property offers nine miles of hiking trails and a section of private hunting grounds. Its land runs from the Wiconisco Creek to the summit of Berry Mountain.
Following the relocated center’s opening, it expanded to include three gallery spaces, a gift shop, administrative offices, classrooms, an amphitheater and a natural play area. This year, the center celebrates its 30th anniversary with a gala set for Nov. 10.
Smith began his career in 1939 with a cover painting for Pennsylvania Angler magazine. He then moved to South Carolina for a job illustrating hunting and firearm books for Samworth Publishing. Following that, he returned home to Millersburg and began a longstanding association with the state Game Commission as an illustrator.
In the 1960s, Smith initiated a column, “Gone for the Day,” for the commission’s magazine, using his enormous series of field journals and sketchbooks. The columns were later published in book form, which remains in print today.
In 1983, he was commissioned to create Pennsylvania’s first state duck stamp. He continued to work until his death, having created thousands of wildlife sketches and paintings for books, magazines and other publications, plus dozens of limited-edition prints.
“There were two big masterworks on Ned’s easel when he died,” noted Adam Steppy, Ned Smith Center’s marketing and program director. “He always thought of his last 14 years as a gift after he had heart surgery. He died from a heart attack in his garden.”
In 2011, the center opened the Ned Smith Gallery with assistance from the state Game Commission. The gallery features a rotating, $2.3 million collection of Smith’s original paintings, drawings, field sketches, journal notes and manuscripts, donated by Smith’s wife, Marie.
Until recently, Weidensaul served as the center’s collection curator and coordinator for Project Owlnet and Project SNOWstorm, separate owl-banding projects based at the center. He also is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of more than two dozen natural history books and writes for several national publications.
John Laskowski, a founding board director, said that he first met Smith as a child and spent much time outdoors with him in the ensuing years. He also spent hours upon hours reading Smith’s library of works.
“I grew to love Ned and Marie,” said Laskowski, of Carsonville. “The saddest day of my life was when he passed in 1985.”
Laskowski—aka “Mothman”—serves as curator of the center’s mounted collection of 18,941 butterflies and moths that he acquired with the help of friends and that are featured in a small interactive display in the Olewine Gallery. The third exhibit of Faye Arlene and Joseph Kopp’s butterfly and moth collection will host its grand opening on Dec. 3 and will be displayed in the gallery for a limited time.
Steppy said that he realizes that digitized, 21st-century life poses a different set of challenges than when the center opened 30 years ago.
“Evolution is the big thing now,” he said. “How do you make people interested in the center when the people who loved Ned Smith are gone? It’s a tough go. How do you compete with so many museums and activity centers that are around today?”
Future goals for the center include updating its galleries to “better reflect the relevant historical aspects of Ned Smith’s legacy,” as well as continuing to host exhibits, performances and other events.
“Ned Smith was very ahead of his time,” Steppy said. “His words ring truer today than they did in the 1970s about the escalating need for conservation.”
The Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art is located at 176 Water Company Rd., Millersburg. For more information, visit www.nedsmithcenter.org.
The 2023 NSCNA Gala is scheduled for Nov. 10, 6 to 9 p.m., at the Country Club of Harrisburg, 401 Fishing Creek Valley Rd., Middle Paxton Township. For information, call 717-692-3699.
If you like what we do, please support our work. Become a Friend of TheBurg!
