Artist: Betye Saar

Roberts Projects presents Let's Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar, an exhibition exploring the central role of costume design in Saar's early career and throughout her life as a mother and artist. The archivally-driven exhibition features over 200 objects, including costume designs, photographs, drawings, garments, jewelry, artworks and historic materials from the 1950s–1970s.

Anchored by Saar’s costume designs, Let’s Get It On brings together for the first time a collection of newly-discovered photographs documenting early productions at the Inner City Cultural Center (ICCC)—a multicultural performing arts institution founded in the wake of the 1965 Watts Rebellion—presented alongside the original sketches she created for those very performances.

As part of a series of exhibitions and initiatives celebrating the occasion of Saar's 100th birthday this summer, Let's Get It On advances a new understanding of the artist's design work as a vital part of her interconnected and ever-evolving practice. The exhibition is accompanied by a forthcoming comprehensive catalogue published by Roberts Projects.

Born in Los Angeles in 1926, Saar studied interior design and social work at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she graduated in 1949 with a BA in Applied Arts. Reflecting on the connection between her design studies and artistic practice, Saar has said, "I can see where my assemblages correlate to that because it's like a miniature little environment. I know that my emphasis on design has a lot to do with how I make my art because I have a real imprint of what balances, how space is divided, and color and pattern."

Shortly after graduating, she began making greeting cards, enamel objects and jewelry, presenting her work at local residential venues, tradeshows and competitions alongside others in Los Angeles’s growing arts landscape.

In 1968, Saar began working as a costume designer for the ICCC, where she collaborated on productions such as West Side Story (1969), Antigone (1970), The Gnadiges Fraulein and Burlesque is Alive (1970), among many others. Working and performing in theater unlocked a new world for Saar, transforming her artistic perspective and introducing her to actors, directors, artists and curators with whom she'd form lifelong friendships as she transitioned to the world of fine art. Saar has described the long-lasting impact of these years on her practice, saying, "Theater sets and lighting influenced my later work when I went into installation art because I liked a certain kind of theatrical feeling to my installations. As early as the late sixties and early seventies, theater became part of the information that I stored there.”

While working for the theater, Saar also regularly made clothes and costumes for her daughters and others to wear at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, held at Paramount Ranch in Southern California from 1964–1973. Related objects and original photographs from Saar's personal collection are included in the exhibition.

Saar's work as a fine artist evolved radically throughout the years covered in Let's Get It On, underlining how some of her most canonical works in assemblage—such as Black Girl's Window (1969) and The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972)—were deeply informed by and indebted to this unique moment in her life.

With its richness of historical detail and curatorial depth, Let's Get It On emphasizes the indispensability of record-keeping—an area in which Saar is exemplary. Beginning in the early 1960s, Saar meticulously maintained ledgers documenting not only artworks and exhibitions, but also the diverse streams of income that sustained her household, such as designing album art for jazz musician Bennie Maupin, book covers for poet Ishmael Reed, magazine commissions and teaching. These comprehensive records attest to her tireless work while also revealing the social, cultural and institutional structures that enabled an African American woman to flourish in mid-20th century Los Angeles.

Crucially, these archives have also been instrumental in developing the present exhibition, serving as a foundation for identifying and locating numerous objects and artworks. Over the past decade, Saar's extensive archives have been catalogued by Roberts Projects, forming an invaluable resource for exhibitions such as Let's Get It On, of which a focused selection was on view at the University of Chicago's Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society (January 30 – April 25, 2025).

The work of safeguarding and interpreting Saar's legacy has been entrusted to the Betye Saar Legacy Group. Established in 2025 by the artist and her studio in collaboration with Roberts Projects, the group consists of Esther Adler, Carlo Barbatti, Christophe Cherix, Carol S. Eliel, Mark Godfrey, Diana Seave Greenwald, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Stephanie Seidel and Zoé Whitley. Hand-selected by Saar for their expertise in different areas of her multidisciplinary practice, this coalition of leading scholars and esteemed curators from global institutions is a testament to the enduring importance of her life and work for future generations.