Awards
2007 Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work
Betye Saar
Tracye Saar-Cavanaugh, Betye Saar holding a portrait of herself as an infant, 2006
For more than forty years, Betye Saar has created potent visions deeply imprinted by the African American experience. Best known for her assemblages and mixed-media constructions, Saar generates her iconography from a grid of historical memory and resistance to racial stereotypes. Self-described as “born of depression era parents,” she credits her early education and the lessons of childhood for providing her with the foundations for her life as an artist. She calls herself a narrative artist who tells stories and has been described by a critic as a “visual griot.”
From 2005 to 2007, her work was celebrated in a national touring exhibition, Betye Saar: Extending the Frozen Moment, which focuses on the photographic fragment as a defining feature of her oeuvre. Saar explains, “I am intrigued with combining the remnant of memories, fragments of relics and ordinary objects, with the components of technology. It’s a way of delving into the past and reaching into the future simultaneously. The art itself becomes the bridge.” The exhibition has appeared at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Norton Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Crocker Museum of Art.
Extending the Frozen Moment pays homage not only to Saar’s work, but also to the circumference of her legacy as one of the most influential figures in the history of African American art. One such legacy is her family: she is mother of two artist daughters of renown. An exhibition with them, called Family Legacies: The Art of Betye, Lezley, and Alison Saar, has been touring the United States since 2005; its final stop is the Palmer Museum of Art at Pennsylvania State University, on display through April 22.
Betye Saar, Colored, 2002, mixed-media assemblage with hand mirror, 14½ x 30 x 1½ in. University of Michigan Museum of Art. Museum purchase made possible through the generosity of Dr. James and Vivian Curtis and the W. Hawkins Ferry Fund (artwork © Betye Saar; photograph provided by Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY)
Saar’s distinguished career has been marked by important and provocative one-person exhibitions, including a fall 2006 show at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, called Betye Saar: Migrations/Transformations, that explores race and gender in American society. Her inclusion in myriad group exhibitions is testament to the high regard and popularity of this artist. In the last two years alone, these include: Los Angeles–Paris: 1955–1985 at the Centre Georges Pompidou, and exhibition and projects at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the New-York Historical Society, the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and the Boston University Art Gallery. Her work can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Walker Art Center, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the High Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
The jury confers this award on Saar with pleasure and great respect for her distinguished achievements and the impact of her work on the American and international art community.
Jury: Patricia Failing, University of Washington, chair; Margo Machida, University of Connecticut, Storrs; Richard Kalina, Fordham University; and Kevin Consey, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, University of California.