The New York Historical Celebrates Artist Betye Saar’s 100th Birthday with a New Exhibition Featuring Her Black Doll Collection

Betye Saar (b. 1926), 10 Dolls with Black Mask, 2022. Watercolor and pencil on paper. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California. Photo: Paul Salveson

Exhibition on view from May 8 – October 4, 2026

The New York Historical presents Betye Saar’s Black Dolls, an exhibition marking the 100th birthday of pioneering artist Betye Saar, on view May 8 – October 4, 2026.  Complementing The Historical’s 2022 exhibition Black Dolls, this new exhibition focuses on an iconic artist’s engagement with Black dolls. A key figure in the 1970s Black Arts and feminist art movements, Saar gained wide recognition for her trenchant assemblages incorporating and reframing racist Americana. To celebrate her landmark promised gift of more than 100 Black dolls to The New York Historical’s collections, Betye Saar’s Black Dolls features a selection of dolls from the promised gift alongside radiant watercolors in which Saar brings the dolls to life and several signature assemblages incorporating dolls into altar-like structures to their mystical and symbolic power. 

“The New York Historical is proud to honor the 100th birthday of Betye Saar with an exhibition that explores the intersection of personal memory and American history,” said Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of The New York Historical. “This extraordinary promised gift of more than 100 Black dolls—spanning the 19th century to the present—marks a transformative addition to our collection. Together, these objects tell a complex and profound story and provide insight into the creative process of a renowned artist.”

“I have always been drawn to the intangible energy of used materials—discarded materials that I recycle and make anew,” said Betye Saar. “I collect a lot of things, and dolls have been consistent companions in this; I keep them in a cupboard, where all their energy is concentrated. When I work, I often feel hypnotized, selecting and rejecting objects, images, symbols, as if in a trance until a message is finally revealed. During lockdown, I drew comfort from my dolls and found joy in simply touching them, smoothing their skirts, and arranging their tiny limbs. It was a reminder that even at 95 [at the time], I was still playing with my dolls.”

Saar began collecting Black dolls during the late 1960s in Los Angeles, a pursuit shaped in part by absence, having grown up in the 1920s and 1930s without owning a Black doll. She first encountered one as an adult in an antique shop window on Sunset Boulevard. Over the ensuing decades, her collection has grown to encompass a wide spectrum, from handmade rag dolls crafted by Black women for children in their care to mass-produced toys and tourist souvenirs, some rooted in histories of racism and the perpetuation of stereotypes. 

Curated in close collaboration with the artist and her studio, Betye Saar’s Black Dolls, a selection of 27 dolls from the promised gift alongside 15 watercolors and examples of her signature assemblages underscore the imaginative possibilities of play, as Saar reanimates historical objects to endow them with agency, personality, and story.

Highlights include: 

• Hoo Doo Woman (1974): the only Black doll designed and created by Saar herself. Described by the artist as a “healer doll casting a spell,” it exemplifies her belief in the mystical power of dolls. Accompanying it is a collage inspired by the work as well as a photograph of the artist making the same ritualistic gestures as her doll. 
• Indigo Mercy (1975): an assemblage which incorporates a doll Saar acquired in Mexico City inside a clock case. Saar replaced the doll’s limbs with porcelain doll legs and iguana paws. The windows of the case, which partially reveal the figure, suggest the perception of hidden mystical knowledge, reinforced by the doll’s votive charm milagro eyes.
• Topsy-turvy dolls: designed in such a way that a Black girl doll flips upside-down to reveal a white girl doll underneath a shared skirt. It features alongside watercolors in which Saar portrays only the Black sides of her topsy-turvy dolls as well as a unique double-sided watercolor showing a Black doll from the front and the back of the matching white doll.
• Black Floating Doll in Mystic Sky (2022): In this watercolor of a late 19th-century Black doll suspended in a celestial night sky filled with stars, moons, and planets, Saar depicts the doll hovering above the earth-bound viewer as if imbued with mystical energy.

Betye Saar’s Black Dolls is curated by Wendy Nālani E. Ikemoto, vice president & chief curator, and Rebecca Klassen, curator of material culture and decorative arts, The New York Historical. 

About Betye Saar

As a leading practitioner of assemblage art, Betye Saar fuses the historical and collective memory of race and gender in the United States with personal autobiography. Her symbolically rich body of work has evolved over time to demonstrate the environmental, cultural, political, racial, technological, economic, and historical context in which it exists. 

For over seven decades, Saar has created art that explores the social, political, and economic underpinnings of America’s collective memory. She began her career in the early 1960s producing work that dealt with mysticism, nature, and family. Like many women who came to political consciousness during that era, Saar takes on the feminist mantra “the personal is political” as a fundamental principle in her assemblage works. In the early 1970s, she began appropriating and transforming Black collectibles in pieces like The Liberation of Aunt Jemima(1972). Saar continues to actively produce impactful new work.

Programming
For families, story time themed to the exhibition will take place throughout its run. Visit the family calendar for details. Private group tours can also be arranged throughout the exhibition.

Support
Exhibitions at The New York Historical are made possible by the Saunders Trust for American History, the Evelyn & Seymour Neuman Fund, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. WNET is the media sponsor.

About The New York Historical 
New York’s first museum, The New York Historical is a leading cultural institution covering over 400 years of American history. Our offerings span groundbreaking exhibitions; peerless collections of art, documents, and artifacts; acclaimed educational programs for teachers and students nationwide; and thought-provoking conversations among leading scholars, journalists, and thinkers about the past, present, and future of the American experiment. The New York Historical is a museum of museums and a collection of collections. We are home to the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, the Center for Women’s History, the DiMenna Children’s History Museum, and the future American LGBTQ+ Museum. We elevate the perspectives and scholarship that define the United States’ democratic heritage and challenge us all to shape our ongoing history for the better. Connect with us at nyhistory.org or at @nyhistory on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Tumblr.