This exhibition presents a selection of the washboards that the American artist Betye Saar, a key figure in the Black Art Movement of the 1960s, has constructed over the last 20 years. In Saar’s collages and assemblages racist stereotypes, such as Aunt Jemimas, sambos and mammies, reappear in defiant guise to confront past and present manifestations of racism – as well as pointing beyond them to the future. Find out more about the Betye Saar exhibition from the New-York Historical Society website.
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Supreme Quality (1998), Betye Saar. Photo: Tim Lanterman, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; Courtesy the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA
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Liberation (2011), Betye Saar. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer; courtesy the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA
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Dark Times (2015), Betye Saar. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer; courtesy the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA
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Extreme Times Call For Extreme Heroines (2015), Betye Saar. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer; courtesy the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA
What would Jane Austen say?