Let’s Get It On

The Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society is pleased to present Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar, on view January 30 through April 27, 2025. The exhibition offers the first sustained look at a pivotal moment in Saar’s career, when a visit to Chicago’s Field Museum in 1974 transformed the way she conceived of herself as an artist. A display of more than 60 objects—including a ceremonial robe from Cameroon, costumes and jewelry designed by Saar, drawings, photos, archival materials, and more—casts new light on the way Saar’s early career in costume design informed her pioneering work in assemblage and installation.

Let’s Get It On is presented as part of a series of exhibitions and events linked to Panafrica: Histories, Aesthetics, Politics, a multi-year research project at the Neubauer Collegium that is exploring the links between Pan-African politics and culture. The series includes Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica, a major exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago that was informed by the project and curated by the research team. Saar’s work is featured in that exhibition, and she will participate in Panafrica Days (March 5–8), a constellation of discussions and performances across Chicago jointly organized by the Art Institute, the Black Arts Consortium at Northwestern University, Chicago Humanities, and the Neubauer Collegium.

Born in Los Angeles in 1926, Saar trained as a printmaker and interior designer. She took an early interest in experimenting with the incorporation of prints on everyday objects and began exploring the sculptural possibilities of found materials after visiting a Joseph Cornell retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1967. A visit to the Field Museum strengthened her interest in weaving together strands from her personal life, American history, and Afro-Atlantic symbolism. At the time she was a single mother raising three daughters in Los Angeles. She was earning a living as a costume designer and teacher, and actively participating in the city’s vibrant Black Arts Movement. In the spring of 1974, she helped a group of local artists raise funds for a trip to the National Conference of Artists in Chicago. Saar traveled with David Hammons, and the two visited the Field together.

“The Field Museum was an important step in my development as an artist because I saw lots and lots of African art, Oceanic art, and Egyptian art… I had never seen that much,” Saar recalled in 1990. A Bamum chieftain’s robe, a centerpiece of the Neubauer Collegium exhibition, made a particularly strong impression on her. “It was so powerful,” Saar remembered. “For me, even in a glass display case, it was almost like an electrical shock that came through that display.”

Inspired by her trip to the Field, Saar deepened her resolve to mine African symbols and rituals as part of her artistic practice. Her interest in costume design began to recede as she became increasingly devoted to developing new sculptural forms and visual language. In the ensuing decades, Saar became internationally renowned for the way her assemblages channel myth, magic, and memory to address the entangled legacies of racial and feminist struggles in America.

“With its strong connections to our Panafrica research project, Let’s Get It On exemplifies the Neubauer Collegium’s approach to integrating the arts and research inquiry,” said Tara Zahra, Roman Family Director at the Neubauer Collegium. “We are deeply honored by the opportunity to showcase these early pieces by Betye Saar in partnership with the Art Institute and the Field Museum, and thrilled to share new insights about how her work in fashion design helped to launch her extraordinary career as an artist.”

Let’s Get It On is curated by Dieter Roelstraete and made possible by the Neubauer Family Foundation and the Brenda Mulmed Shapiro Fund. Additional support and partnership provided by Roberts Projects, the Field Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.