Betye Saar, the artist who transformed racist memorabilia into symbols of Black liberation, died Sunday morning in Los Angeles at 99. Her death was confirmed Monday by relatives. She would have turned 100 this week.
Saar’s 1972 work, “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,” directly confronted the commodification of Black identity for corporate profit. This piece featured memorabilia that denigrated Black people, including a 19th-century minstrel character. Saar reclaimed the figure, depicting her smiling while holding a rifle and a hand grenade.
This powerful subversion came in direct response to the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. Saar stated that King’s death “triggered a rage within me, and the mystic transformed into the warrior.” She acknowledged her hesitation about using such potent, negative images, but found resolution in making “Aunt Jemima into a revolutionary figure.”
Challenging Racist Capital
Quaker Oats finally announced it would retire its Aunt Jemima brand in 2020, 6 years ago. The company acknowledged the logo and its origins were “based on a racial stereotype,” long after Saar’s art had exposed its violent ideological function. Saar, a central figure of the 1960s Black Art Movement, pioneered assemblage boxes, reclaiming Jim Crow-era memorabilia as powerful totems of Black liberation. Roberts Projects, her gallery, noted her work’s evolution to demonstrate its context within “environmental, cultural, political, racial, technological, economic, and historical” forces. Her appropriation of Black collectibles, heirlooms, and utilitarian objects were “transformed through subversion,” the gallery stated.
Saar began her career in design, shifting to art at age 35, and continued making art into her 90s. Her practice incorporated painting, printmaking, sculpture, and found objects like dolls, washboards, and other antiques. She often referenced her astrological sign of Leo, punctuating many works with lions.
The Art World's Gatekeepers
The established art world, often a gatekeeper for dominant narratives, initially offered only sporadic exhibition of her work in large institutions. After a 1975 solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 51 years ago, major institutions largely overlooked her contributions for decades. It took until 2019, 7 years ago, for the Museum of Modern Art in New York to acquire her groundbreaking 1969 work, “Black Girl’s Window,” which wasn't widely celebrated for decades after its creation. In the same year, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and MoMA mounted concurrent solo shows, finally giving her work broader institutional recognition.
Angela Robinson Witherspoon, who produced and directed a 2023 documentary on Saar’s life, 3 years ago, highlighted the artist's struggle against an art world “dominated by white males.” Witherspoon noted Saar's boundless energy for making art, driven by a desire to speak out. Saar was inducted to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in spring 2026, the same year she died.
Saar taught and mentored generations of Black artists, including painter Kerry James Marshall. She wanted to be part of the Civil Rights Movement while raising her three young daughters. Her legacy continues to be explored, with “Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar” currently on view at Robert Projects in Los Angeles, and a collection of over 100 of her dolls at the New-York Historical Society in Manhattan.