Betye Saar, recognized for her assemblages confronting histories of racism, has introduced a brand new initiative to safeguard her legacy. The 99-year-old artist, in partnership together with her longtime gallery Roberts Initiatives, has launched the Betye Saar Legacy Group, which can function a scholarly committee devoted to stewarding her contributions to modern artwork historical past.
Saar is intently related to the Black Arts Motion of the Seventies, and her work continuously challenges racial and gender stereotypes. She started creating assemblages after seeing a 1967 exhibition of Joseph Cornell’s work on the Pasadena Artwork Museum. For slightly below six a long time, she has created these dense sculptural works constructed from discovered objects, household heirlooms, and cultural artifacts, amongst different supplies.
The Betye Saar Legacy Group contains 9 worldwide curators, every with longstanding connections to Saar’s work. Members embody Esther Adler and incoming Christophe Cherix of the Museum of Trendy Artwork (MoMA); Carol S. Eliel of LACMA; Carlo Barbatti of Fondazione Prada in Milan; Diana Seave Greenwald of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Elvira Dyangani Ose of the Museu d’Artwork Contemporani de Barcelona; Stephanie Seidel of ICA Miami; and unbiased curators Zoé Whitley and Mark Godfrey. Cherix is slated to change into MoMA’s director in September 2025.
“Over time, I’ve labored with all the members, and so they every have gathered a singular little bit of know-how, a selected perception, about my artistic course of,” mentioned Sarr in an announcement. “I look ahead to future tasks with this particular group of people that I think about not simply colleagues but in addition my pals.”
The group will work intently with the artist, her studio, and Roberts Initiatives to offer perception into her assemblage follow and lengthy profession. It is going to help curatorial scholarship and oversee efforts to interpret and develop entry to Saar’s archive. The group may even work intently with Saar’s daughter—Tracye, Alison, and Lezley—to compile images, varied paperwork, and private journals. Roberts Initiatives can also be main the creation of a catalogue raisonné of Saar’s work, a undertaking that started in 2016 and also will characteristic a biography by Whitley.
Digitization of Saar’s archive started after the 2016 exhibition “Betye Saar: Uneasy Dancer” at Fondazione Prada, which laid the muse for the curatorial committee’s formation. The archive has additionally supported main exhibitions, together with “Soul of a Nation” at Tate Trendy in 2017; “Betye Saar: Name and Response” at LACMA in 2019; “The Legends of Black Lady’s Window” at MoMA in 2019; Critical Moonlight at ICA Miami in 2021; and “Coronary heart of a Wanderer” on the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 2023.
Saar—a medalist of the 2025 Artwork Basel awards—can be debuting new work in Miami this 12 months as a part of the truthful.. Julie Roberts, co-founder of Roberts Initiatives, informed ArtNews: “She simply needs to spend her time making artwork, gardening, and being together with her household.”
