The Long Journey by Lonnie Holley

Lonnie Holley’s The Long Journey in Boston’s Central Wharf Park is a new public sculpture commission comprising four totemic works in steel that demonstrate the artist’s ability to communicate across time and ancestry. Holley continues his decades-long engagement with the silhouette as a visual and philosophical tool – one that speaks powerfully to survival, transformation and collective memory. Given Central Wharf Park’s proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and the sea’s role in Holley’s ancestors’ passage to America, as well as his own seventy-year path from his beginnings in Alabama to his remarkable life today, the project’s title invites viewers to imagine their own efforts and trials in becoming. The Long Journey aspires to be a site of reflection, reverence, and empathy for the community and visitors alike.

The Long Journey, a year-long outdoor sculptural installation, is free to the public and will remain on view until the Fall of 2026.