Betye Saar Honored at Getty Center Memorial Filled with Family and Art

The Getty Center filled its largest, 450-seat auditorium this week for a memorial to Betye Saar, the Los Angeles artist who died last July only four days short of her 100th birthday. The tone was sombre and celebratory, ending with her brother-in-law Bennie Maupin on saxophone and the band Bayou Bump leading a procession, as Saar had wanted.

The tributes did not gloss over her life. They placed her balance of mothering and artmaking at the center of the story. Saar earned her bachelor's degree at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1949, at a time when there were few Black students there.

What did her family say?

One of the most powerful tributes came from her eldest nephew, Channing Johnson, who described her as a "true" if untraditional matriarch.

"She was as impactful and skilful as a family matriarch as she was a gifted artist. She gathered us together whether it was in a back yard or public park. She kept our family history in the forefront of our minds and in the public eye—you can literally see our family in her artwork," Johnson said, referring to assemblages in which she incorporated family snapshots and memorabilia.

Johnson also celebrated Saar's sense of humour and adventure. He noted that she learned to belly dance early on and showed off her dance moves in June, when the Museum of Modern Art honored her at its Party in the Garden gala.

A studio unlike any other

MoMA director Christophe Cherix preceded Johnson with a tribute of his own. He recalled Saar's studio in Topanga Canyon being "unlike any other studio I had ever seen…overflowing with treasures, almost archaeological, with objects patiently waiting sometimes years or even decades to be gathered, recognised [and] assembled into works of art".

That longtime Topanga home and studio is where Saar developed her deeply spiritualist, Black-centred, female-empowered vision through printmaking and assemblage. Her most famous use of the form is the 1969 work Black Girl's Window, which organizes esoteric, celestial images behind a windowpane.

The same house is where she raised her three daughters: the sculptor Alison Saar, the mixed media artist Lezley Saar and the writer Tracye Saar. Early on, the daughters liked to pretend the wheel of their mother's printing press was the helm of a pirate ship. They have said in interviews they are happy they survived without losing a finger or hand.

Three generations of Saar women

The veteran Los Angeles collector Joy Simmons recalled bringing her week-old daughter Naima to a Saar opening at the Jan Baum gallery in 1981. "I was not going to miss this opportunity to celebrate a Black woman opening up at a white woman's gallery," she said.

Simmons described a creative lineage that extends to grandchildren working in the arts today.

"To Alison, Lezley, Tracye and the whole family: I've watched three generations of Saar women make this city's art history something special. Betye's work belongs to museums now," Simmons said. "But I know her proudest moment and her proudest accomplishment is all of you."

What does this change for how Saar is remembered? The memorial framed her legacy not only through works like Black Girl's Window now held by museums, but through the family and city-level art history she built alongside them.