Betye Saar: Extending the Frozen Moment
March 18 - June 4, 2006

Betye Saar is widely viewed as one of the most distinguished figures in American art today. Born in 1926 in Los Angeles, she emerged in the 1960s as a seminal figure in the redefinition of African American identity in art. Throughout her career, Saar has made art that challenges us to think about our societal responses to race and to the history of race in the United States. Though politically trenchant, Saar's work moves beyond protest to encompass a profound spirituality and an awareness of the things that link human beings across cultural lines and across time. Best known for her richly evocative assemblages of found objects, Saar has been included in numerous exhibitions and is represented in many major museum collections. This exhibition examines Saar's achievement by focusing on her work with photography, specifically, her incorporation of photographic fragments as a metaphor for her view of the African American experience and of lives too often obscured in American visual history.

This exhibition is organized and circulated by the University of Michigan Museum of Art. This exhibition has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Henry Luce Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Peter Norton Family Foundation. Support for the local presentation of this exhibition is being provided by The Georgene and Hamish Maxwell Exhibition Endowment and the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Local media support provided by the Sun-Sentinel.