Martha Jane Pettway

Martha Jane Pettway at the well 1937, Arthur Rothstein, Library of Congress

Martha Jane Pettway (1898 - 2003) was born in Gee’s Bend, Alabama. Martha Jane and her husband, Little Pettway, were figureheads of the Gee’s Bend community, encouraging participation in New Deal social programs and serving as community spokespersons to government liaisons from Washington. They organized their family and community members to take part in the protests that took place across Alabama after desegregation and integration. Martha Jane and her husband lived on a 75-acre plot of land and had fifteen children. Martha Jane split her time caring for her children, tending the fields, and quilting, and she passed along her quilt making practice to her eldest daughter, Plummer T. Pettway.

Martha Jane’s work was included in the first major museum exhibition introducing Gee’s Bend to the art world in 2002, The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, originating at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Additional museum venues for this exhibition include the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Orlando Museum of Art, The Walters Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, the Speed Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum and the Philadelphia Art Museum.

Work by Martha Jane Pettway is in the permanent collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum, NY,  The Philadelphia Museum of Art and The National Museum of African American History, Washington D.C.

Martha Jane Pettway was featured in the following gallery exhibition:

 My Way: A Gathering Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, 2023

 

CLICK HERE for available work by Martha Jane Pettway

 

Martha Jane Pettway's new "Roosevelt House" and a glimpse of her old cabin, 1939. image by Marion Post Wolcott, Library of Congress