Betye Saar died on July 26, four days before her 100th birthday, to the shock and sadness of an art world preparing to celebrate the centennial of the singular assemblage artist.
Born in Los Angeles in 1926, Saar spent six decades excavating the American sediments of race and politics through found objects, from the innocuous—furniture, feathers, birdcages—to the insidious. Saar’s groundbreaking 1972 piece The Liberation of Aunt Jemima depicted the eponymous “Mammy” figure bearing a toy rifle and broom, with a Black Power fist rising before her. “She is going to liberate herself at all costs,” ARTnews wrote in its obituary yesterday, echoing Saar’s own words: “Take a woman who was a victim and make her a warrior.”
Saar “redefined contemporary art,” the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) wrote on Instagram, joining the many cultural institutions, curators, and artists who shared condolences following news of her death. “Saar was a master assemblage and collage artist who deftly integrated found objects into sculptural forms and ambitious installations that brought together the ordinary with the mystical, the political with the personal.”
MOCA continued by reflecting on Saar’s legacy at the institution, beginning with her inclusion in The First Show, its aptly titled inaugural exhibition at the Temporary Contemporary, now known as the Geffen Contemporary. In 1984, the museum presented 48 of her works at a disused brick gas station on the grounds of the Temporary Contemporary. Six years later, MOCA commissioned Saar to create a series of assemblages and installations to accompany 10 performances of Ellen Sebastian’s theatrical production Sanctified.
In its own tribute, the Getty Museum called her “a pivotal figure in American art,” while the Hammer Museum (which honored Saar at its recent gala) reminded viewers that activist Angela Davis cited Saar’s The Liberation of Aunt Jemima “as the beginning of the Black Women’s movement.” The Los Angeles County Museum of Art likewise praised her 1998 sculptural tableau I’ll Bend But I Will Not Break, which is on view in its David Geffen Galleries. Using an ironing board familiar to laundresses as its base, the work “combines powerful overlapping references to slavery and slave ships, traditional female labor, the history of late 19th- and early 20th-century art, and modern-day racism,” the museum writes on its website.
“Since I was a child art has been important,” Saar said in an interview shared by the museum. “It feeds an inner need that people don’t even know they have until it’s taken away.”
The Studio Museum in Harlem, whose relationship with Saar spanned nearly fifty years, wrote that Saar’s practice “redefined ideas of domesticity and Black feminism in contemporary art.”
“We extend our heartfelt condolences to her daughters, Lezley Saar, Alison Saar, Tracye Saar-Cavanaugh, family, and friends,” the museum added.
Ceramist Maddy Inez, sharing a photograph of her grandmother, bid farewell to “GranBetye. Our matriarch, teacher, spirit speaker, my best friend and truly one of the deepest loves of my life. Thank you for everything.”
Art Basel, which honored Saar with its eponymous medal in 2025, revisited a 2021 interview with the artist. “Certain things just catch my eye for whatever reason and I think, ‘I can make that into art.’ I learned early on that you can make art out of anything,” Saar said.
Elsewhere online, more personal remembrances poured in, a mix of grief over her loss and gratitude for her gifts. “I have known Betye Saar since I was just out of college and worked on her beautiful show at MOCA Los Angeles in an old gas station building that no longer exists but was part of Frank Gehry’s original Temporary Contemporary,” wrote Connie Butler, curator and director of MoMA PS1. “I was a baby art historian and I will never forget going to her Laurel Canyon studio. What an incredible human being and artist.”
Phong H. Bui is an artist, writer, and co-founder of the Brooklyn Rail, described Saar as “one of our most treasured artists” who “in confronting stereotypes about Black women, has elevated assemblage as her preferred medium to great heights.” Critic and curator Hilton Als shared an image of himself with Saar at her Laurel Canyon studio in Los Angeles in 2023. “What a well-earned rest. What a fulfilled and fulfilling life,” he wrote in a post later shared by Legacy Russell.
Poet, performance artist, and activist Pamela Sneed shared a pastel portrait of Saar on Instagram, accompanied by the message, “I guess continue to honor our dead by continuing to make art,” and a wish for her to rest in “peace and power.”
Other artists kept their tributes brief but tender: “To betty with LOVE,” wrote Marilyn Nance.
“We will miss you,” Theaster Gates said. “Thank you for the dance.”
