07/30/2026
We’re taking a moment this week to honor Betye Saar, who passed away July 26th, just shy of her 100th birthday. She showed generations of artists — us included — that the objects already in a room can hold an entire reckoning, if you’re willing to look.
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Saar didn’t start as an artist. She trained in design at UCLA, worked as a social worker, and it wasn’t until her late thirties, after seeing an exhibition of Joseph Cornell’s boxed assemblages, that she found her medium: objects. The things already in a room, already carrying a history, waiting for someone to notice what they meant.
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Saar once said, “I’m the kind of person who recycles materials but I also recycle emotions and feelings.” She created a truly distinctive visual language which conveyed to us that the materials of a life — a window frame, a washboard, a figurine someone meant as an insult — can become the raw material of truth-telling.
