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Betye Saar: Heart of a Wanderer
A richly illustrated look at how travel influenced the work of renowned contemporary artist Betye Saar
Betye Saar (b. 1926) is an artist whose assemblages tell visual stories and convey powerful political messages. A leading figure of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, she works with found objects—many of which she gathers on her extensive travels—to explore themes like symbolic mysticism, feminism, racism, and Eurocentric chauvinism. Betye Heart of a Wanderer sheds new light on Saar’s unique creative process, her trips around the world, and the diverse ways in which her artworks engage with global histories of travel and forced migration. It presents how the artist’s work conjures the transporting experience of a voyage to a faraway place.
This beautifully illustrated book draws on original, in-depth interviews with Saar and the companions who accompanied the artist in her travels across four continents over several decades. Essays by leading scholars contextualize Saar’s journeys within her broader life and career, as well as how her practice fits into broader traditions—such as scrapbooking—in African American visual culture. In addition to providing this context, this book explores how Saar’s assemblage practice both echoes and provides a critical counterpoint to the collecting practices of Gilded Age American art collectors like Isabella Stewart Gardner.
Featuring a wealth of previously unpublished material—including almost thirty travel sketchbooks and two dozen finished assemblages— Betye Heart of a Wanderer provides a fresh look at a groundbreaking American artist while offering a timely social history of the impact of travel on the African American experience.
Distributed for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Exhibition Schedule
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
February 16–May 21, 2023
Betye Saar (b. 1926) is an artist whose assemblages tell visual stories and convey powerful political messages. A leading figure of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, she works with found objects—many of which she gathers on her extensive travels—to explore themes like symbolic mysticism, feminism, racism, and Eurocentric chauvinism. Betye Heart of a Wanderer sheds new light on Saar’s unique creative process, her trips around the world, and the diverse ways in which her artworks engage with global histories of travel and forced migration. It presents how the artist’s work conjures the transporting experience of a voyage to a faraway place.
This beautifully illustrated book draws on original, in-depth interviews with Saar and the companions who accompanied the artist in her travels across four continents over several decades. Essays by leading scholars contextualize Saar’s journeys within her broader life and career, as well as how her practice fits into broader traditions—such as scrapbooking—in African American visual culture. In addition to providing this context, this book explores how Saar’s assemblage practice both echoes and provides a critical counterpoint to the collecting practices of Gilded Age American art collectors like Isabella Stewart Gardner.
Featuring a wealth of previously unpublished material—including almost thirty travel sketchbooks and two dozen finished assemblages— Betye Heart of a Wanderer provides a fresh look at a groundbreaking American artist while offering a timely social history of the impact of travel on the African American experience.
Distributed for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Exhibition Schedule
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
February 16–May 21, 2023
- GenresArt
208 pages, Hardcover
Published April 4, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 6, 2026
had a lot of fun reading this exhibition book as betye saar is someone whose tangible practice feels so familar and reminiscent of home! this book (companion to a past exhibition) shows how travel was essential to saar's work, which was shaped by assembling found objects into vast multimedia pieces functioning as 3d collages of spirituality and memory. i myself have begun my journey of being a globe trotter and somewhat of a collector/antiquer, so it was nice to see this other side of saar's life given so much appreciation. saar's travel journals, personal photography, and notebooks illuminate how a worldly process informed her artmaking, and honestly, her overall philosophy on life's possibilities.
the original exhibition took place alongside an exhibition featuring the travel notebooks and consequential collection of isabella stewart gardner (aka wealthy white woman who traveled just because she could). this book and saar's travels really broke apart isabella stewart gardner's automatic importance in the art world and brought saar up to stewart gardner's level of artistic impact, and reasonably so.
saar's travels and methods of collecting objects from around the world show how much more accessible museum work should be, with saar exemplifying the artist-as-curator dynamic within herself without necessarily having the formal training in museum curation, like isabella stewart gardener did. + while america's institutional collections expanded through the gilded age's perversion of wealth and anthropological impulses on the global majority, saar possesses an eye for discovery rooted in a black feminist perspective, hoping to conjure memories of precious cultural sanctity and reveal their beauty. for saar, collection was a method of translation.
i have other thoughts about saar's work being considered "outsider art" or "folk art," but aside from that, the book really took time to understand saar's attention to material and the many ways artists find/remember/record/utilize their inspirations. i particularly enjoyed the watercolor paintings saar did in her travel notebooks from haiti and europe - such vibrant uses of color !!!
one lingering question i have is why saar's larger assemblage works are not also considered to be sculptural, but i suppose that would also be a question of genre and would need a more formalist approach to answer it.
the original exhibition took place alongside an exhibition featuring the travel notebooks and consequential collection of isabella stewart gardner (aka wealthy white woman who traveled just because she could). this book and saar's travels really broke apart isabella stewart gardner's automatic importance in the art world and brought saar up to stewart gardner's level of artistic impact, and reasonably so.
saar's travels and methods of collecting objects from around the world show how much more accessible museum work should be, with saar exemplifying the artist-as-curator dynamic within herself without necessarily having the formal training in museum curation, like isabella stewart gardener did. + while america's institutional collections expanded through the gilded age's perversion of wealth and anthropological impulses on the global majority, saar possesses an eye for discovery rooted in a black feminist perspective, hoping to conjure memories of precious cultural sanctity and reveal their beauty. for saar, collection was a method of translation.
i have other thoughts about saar's work being considered "outsider art" or "folk art," but aside from that, the book really took time to understand saar's attention to material and the many ways artists find/remember/record/utilize their inspirations. i particularly enjoyed the watercolor paintings saar did in her travel notebooks from haiti and europe - such vibrant uses of color !!!
one lingering question i have is why saar's larger assemblage works are not also considered to be sculptural, but i suppose that would also be a question of genre and would need a more formalist approach to answer it.
April 17, 2023
Excellent catalogue to go along with the exhibition. Next best thing to seeing the art.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews