Betye Saar's Black Dolls

Betye Saar’s Black Dolls honors the renowned artist’s 100th birthday and celebrates a landmark promised gift to The New York Historical of her collection of more than 100 Black dolls. Ranging from rag dolls handmade by Black women for both the Black and white children in their care to mass-produced toys and tourist souvenirs, some of which were borne of racism and perpetuate stereotypes, the collection includes Hoo Doo Woman (1974), the only Black doll designed and created by Saar herself. 

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. 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. Curated by Wendy Nālani E. Ikemoto, vice president & chief curator, and Rebecca Klassen, curator of material culture and decorative arts