On View
On viewObject number2020.50.1-.6
Birmingham: Four Girls, Two Boys
Artist
Dawoud Bey
(American, 1953-)
Date2014
Mediumarchival pigment prints
Dimensionssheet (Each): 20 × 30 in. (50.8 × 76.2 cm)
Other (Portfolio Case): 20 3/4 × 31 × 1 3/8 in. (52.7 × 78.7 × 3.5 cm)
Other (Portfolio Case): 20 3/4 × 31 × 1 3/8 in. (52.7 × 78.7 × 3.5 cm)
Credit LineGift of Eric Ceputis and David W. Williams
Exhibition History"EXPO Chicago 2023" Chicago, Navy Pier (April 11 - 14, 2023).Label TextDawoud Bey’s The Birmingham Project considers the legacy of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four young girls and two boys in 1963. Composed of six diptychs, pairing portraits of children with adults, the sitters are the ages of the victims when they died and had they lived. Here, three of the diptychs from the series are on view. The works show each person seated in the same wooden chair, in front of an artwork at the Birmingham Museum of Art, an institution that, like many others in the segregated South, has a complicated history.
Rather than reconstructing the past, Bey visualizes both loss and promise. By connecting generations through portraiture, the artist invites viewers to reflect on the lives interrupted by racial violence in the U.S. while also honoring the resilience of African American communities—in Birmingham and beyond. The Birmingham Project is a memorial and a meditation on loss, memory, and the enduring legacy of the Civil Rights Movement.
[Label Text: For the People: America at 250 Exhibition, June 27 - October 4, 2026]
