Lonnie B. Holley
The Fifth Child Burning
1993
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Lonnie B. Holley
The Fifth Child Burning
1993
Physical Qualities
Found materials from a burned house: wood table, book bag, detergent bottle, shoe, wall plaque, glass bowl, child's clothes, man's white sock, metal chair, wooden rocking chair, electrical cord, table lamp, window blinds, television, toaster oven, radios, cable box, electric can opener, videocassette recorder, roller skate, bed parts, burnt debris, 87 × 72 × 60 in. (221 × 182.9 × 152.4 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
2021.23
The Fifth Child Burning presents the material trauma of the remains of a house fire that consumed a child. Lonnie B. Holley describes the event: “A little girl in Birmingham burned to death in her own house ... Her parents was not home. They had given her luxuries but not their own time.” Holley’s title links this unidentified girl to the four young girls killed in the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, an act of domestic terrorism and catalyst for the civil rights movement. Holley, as well as Thornton Dial, are among the many artists who entered the collection through partial gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation (SGDF), an organization devoted to promoting the work of African American artists, mostly self-trained, from the American South in museum collections.
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