Lucy T. Pettway
Housetop
1964-1974
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Lucy T. Pettway
Housetop
1964-1974
Physical Qualities
Cotton, cotton/? blend, 80 × 76 in. (203.2 × 193 cm.)
Credit Line
Gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation; and purchase with exchange funds from the Pearlstone Family Fund and partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Object Number
2020.33
Lucy T. Pettway’s colorful squares nestled inside each other mirror the wooden ceiling rafters—the housetop— of a typical Gee’s Bend bedroom. The quilt wraps its owner under a second covering made from well-loved solid and floral household linens. Pettway, or “Lunky”, was one of the most respected quilters in Gee’s Bend. An expert in almost every local pattern, she was known to carry a pen and paper to sketch new designs from passing fenceposts and surrounding nature. When Gee’s Bend quilts first arrived in New York, art critics compared the patterns to modern paintings, but this work is rooted in the artist’s experience of Alabama’s architecture and landscape.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase and gift, 2020; Souls Grown Deep Foundation, by 2019; William Arnett Collection of the Tinwood Alliance, Atlanta, Georgia, by 2006
Alvia Wardlaw, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and William Arnett, "Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt" June 4 – September 4, 2006. Circulated to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, October 8 – December 31, 2006; Orlando Museum of Art, January 28 – May 15, 2007; The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore MD, June 16 – August 26, 2007; Tacoma Art Museum, September 22 – December 9, 2007; The Speed Art Museum, Louisville KY, January 2 – March 23, 2008; Denver Museum of Art, April 13 – July 6, 2008
Philadelphia Museum of Art, September 14 – December 14, 2008.
Brittany Luberda and Stella Hendricks, BMA, "She Knew Where She Was Going: Gee's Bend Quilts and Civil Rights," March 10, 2021 - August 1, 2021
Philadelphia Museum of Art, September 14 – December 14, 2008.
Brittany Luberda and Stella Hendricks, BMA, "She Knew Where She Was Going: Gee's Bend Quilts and Civil Rights," March 10, 2021 - August 1, 2021
Arnett, William, Paul Arnett, and Joanne Cubbs. Gee's Bend: the architecture of the quilt. Atlanta, GA: Tinwood Books, 2006, 48.
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