Loretta Pettway Bennett

 

Loretta Pettway Bennett was born in 1960 in Gee’s Bend, a fifth-generation Quilter, and one of the youngest to continue hand-stitching quilts in the renowned Gee’s Bend style. She is the oldest daughter of Tom and Qunnie Pettway. Her ancestry traces back to Dinah Miller, a great-great-great Grandmother, who was one of the first enslaved people to have arrived in Gee’s Bend.

Loretta’s work was included in the 2006 traveling museum exhibition, Gee’s Bend, The Architecture of the Quilt, originating at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. 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 Loretta Pettway Bennett is in the permanent collection of the Studio Museum, Harlem and the Legacy Museum, Montgomery, AL

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Loretta Pettway Bennett is among five people receiving the 2026 Maxwell/Hanrahan Awards in Craft. The grant program, which has awarded up to $500,000 annually since 2018, is conducted by the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation and administered by United States Artists.

The foundation says its Awards in Craft are intended “to celebrate artists and craftspeople for their unique and visionary approach to material-based practice, stewardship of cultural traditions, and craft’s potential to connect people, places

https://www.maxwell-hanrahan.org/award/loretta-pettway-bennett

May, 2026