Betye Saar, the Los Angeles artist whose found-object works confronted stereotypes of Black women and drew from African American spiritual traditions, died on Sunday, 26 July 2026, at her home in Laurel Canyon. She was 99. Her gallery, Roberts Projects in Los Angeles, announced that she died in her sleep in the early morning, four days before what would have been her 100th birthday. Roberts Projects

Born in 1926, Saar emerged as a major voice in the 1960s and became a leading figure in assemblage — an art form in which everyday objects, photographs and materials are combined into three-dimensional works, often housed in boxes or arranged on shelves. She lived and worked in the same Laurel Canyon house since 1962.

Her work interrogated African American identity, spirituality and the intersections between diverse cultures, according to Roberts Projects. She is widely associated with her reworkings of racist imagery — most famously the Aunt Jemima figure, whom Saar armed and recast as a symbol of resistance in pieces that helped define a generation of Black feminist art.

The news drew immediate responses across major US publications. The Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post each published obituaries on 27 July. The Los Angeles Times obituary, by staff writer Julissa James, traced Saar's career from her early costume-design work to her decades of assemblage. The New York Times obituary was written by Jori Finkel; the Washington Post's headline noted that Saar "shattered stereotypes" of Black women. ARTnews

The timing gives the loss a particular weight. Saar had been approaching her centennial year with characteristic intentionality: in August 2025, Roberts Projects announced that she had formed a legacy group of curators — a scholarly committee established to guide the stewardship of her work and archive. The Los Angeles Times had also run a profile on 19 July 2026, by Tara Anne Dalbow, ahead of the birthday, and another in May by Julissa James focusing on an exhibition of Saar's early wearable art at Roberts Projects.

ARTnews noted that at least five exhibitions across the United States were timed to mark Saar's centennial, underscoring the breadth of institutional interest in her work even as her death preceded the anniversary itself.

Saar's gallery, Roberts Projects, has represented her and was the venue for the centennial exhibitions. Her influence spanned generations of artists who drew on her methods of reclaiming demeaning imagery and infusing everyday materials with spiritual and political charge.

For those who follow the art world, Saar's death closes a career that bridged the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the museum retrospectives of the 2010s and 2020s. She worked, exhibited and planned for her legacy almost to the end — four days short of a hundred years.