Betye Saar, assemblage artist who turned racist objects into resistance, dies at 99

Betye Saar died in her sleep on 26 July 2026 in Los Angeles, four days shy of her 100th birthday. Roberts Projects, her gallery, confirmed the news. Her father died when she was five — an infection a segregated hospital refused to treat — a fact she carried into a six-decade practice interrogating African American identity and spirituality through found-object assemblage.