[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-1397793851-e1785264694192.jpg?w=957″]<\/p>\n
\n\tBetye 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. <\/p>\n
\n\tBorn in Los Angeles in 1926, Saar spent six decades excavating the American sediments of race and politics through found objects, from the innocuous\u2014furniture, feathers, birdcages\u2014to the insidious. Saar\u2019s groundbreaking 1972 piece The Liberation of Aunt Jemima<\/em> depicted the eponymous \u201cMammy\u201d figure bearing a toy rifle and broom, with a Black Power fist rising before her. \u201cShe is going to liberate herself at all costs,\u201d ARTnews<\/em> wrote in its obituary yesterday, echoing Saar\u2019s own words: \u201cTake a woman who was a victim and make her a warrior.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSaar \u201credefined contemporary art,\u201d 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. \u201cSaar 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tMOCA continued by reflecting on Saar\u2019s legacy at the institution, beginning with her inclusion in The First Show<\/em>, 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\u2019s theatrical production Sanctified<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tIn its own tribute, the Getty Museum called her \u201ca pivotal figure in American art,\u201d while the Hammer Museum (which honored Saar at its recent gala) reminded viewers that activist Angela Davis cited Saar\u2019s The Liberation of Aunt Jemima<\/em> \u201cas the beginning of the Black Women\u2019s movement.\u201d The Los Angeles County Museum of Art likewise praised her 1998 sculptural tableau I\u2019ll Bend But I Will Not Break<\/em>, which is on view in its David Geffen Galleries. Using an ironing board familiar to laundresses as its base, the work \u201ccombines 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,\u201d the museum writes on its website.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSince I was a child art has been important,\u201d Saar said in an interview shared by the museum. \u201cIt feeds an inner need that people don\u2019t even know they have until it\u2019s taken away.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe Studio Museum in Harlem, whose relationship with Saar spanned nearly fifty years, wrote that Saar\u2019s practice \u201credefined ideas of domesticity and Black feminism in contemporary art.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe extend our heartfelt condolences to her daughters, Lezley Saar, Alison Saar, Tracye Saar-Cavanaugh, family, and friends,\u201d the museum added.<\/p>\n \n\tCeramist Maddy Inez, sharing a photograph of her grandmother, bid farewell to \u201cGranBetye. Our matriarch, teacher, spirit speaker, my best friend and truly one of the deepest loves of my life. Thank you for everything.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tArt Basel, which honored Saar with its eponymous medal in 2025, revisited a 2021 interview with the artist. \u201cCertain things just catch my eye for whatever reason and I think, \u2018I can make that into art.\u2019 I learned early on that you can make art out of anything,\u201d Saar said.<\/p>\n \n\tElsewhere online, more personal remembrances poured in, a mix of grief over her loss and gratitude for her gifts. \u201cI 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\u2019s original Temporary Contemporary,\u201d wrote Connie Butler, curator and director of MoMA PS1. \u201cI was a baby art historian and I will never forget going to her Laurel Canyon studio. What an incredible human being and artist.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tPhong H. Bui is an artist, writer, and co-founder of the Brooklyn Rail<\/em>, described Saar as \u201cone of our most treasured artists\u201d who \u201cin confronting stereotypes about Black women, has elevated assemblage as her preferred medium to great heights.\u201d Critic and curator Hilton Als shared an image of himself with Saar at her Laurel Canyon studio in Los Angeles in 2023. \u201cWhat a well-earned rest. What a fulfilled and fulfilling life,\u201d he wrote in a post later shared by Legacy Russell.<\/p>\n \n\tPoet, performance artist, and activist Pamela Sneed shared a pastel portrait of Saar on Instagram, accompanied by the message, \u201cI guess continue to honor our dead by continuing to make art,\u201d and a wish for her to rest in \u201cpeace and power.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOther artists kept their tributes brief but tender: \u201cTo betty with LOVE,\u201d wrote Marilyn Nance.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe will miss you,\u201d Theaster Gates said. \u201cThank you for the dance.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/museums-curators-and-artists-say-goodbye-to-betye-saar-1234793678\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-1397793851-e1785264694192.jpg?w=957″] 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2067608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2067608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2067608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2067608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2067608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2067608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2067608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}