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Liberation of Aunt Jemima: Cocktail

Betye Saar

Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art

Betye Saar was a prominent member of the Black Arts Movement. Drawing from diverse cultural associations, and influenced both by self-taught artist Simon Rodia’s massive sculptural installation Watts Towers, constructed in the 1960s in her hometown, and by the intimate found-object constructions of American modernist Joseph Cornell, Saar developed a politically potent and personally meaningful practice rooted in assemblage. In Liberation of Aunt Jemima: Cocktail Saar transforms a Gallo wine jug, a 1970s marker of middle-class sophistication, into a tool for Black liberation. For Sacred Symbols fifteen years later she transfigures the detritus one might find in the junk drawer of any home into a composition with spiritual overtones.
MEDIUM Glass, paper, textile, metal
DATES 1973
DIMENSIONS Overall: 12 1/2 × 5 3/4 in. (31.8 × 14.6 cm)  (show scale)
ACCESSION NUMBER 2017.17
CREDIT LINE Purchased with funds given by Elizabeth A. Sackler, gift of the Contemporary Art Committee, and William K. Jacobs, Jr. Fund
PROVENANCE Circa 1973, gift of the artist to Gerald L. Rosen of New York, NY; 2017, purchased from Gerald L. Rosen and Jane Logemann by the Brooklyn Museum.
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MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Betye Saar (American, born 1926). Liberation of Aunt Jemima: Cocktail, 1973. Glass, paper, textile, metal, Overall: 12 1/2 × 5 3/4 in. (31.8 × 14.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchased with funds given by Elizabeth A. Sackler, gift of the Contemporary Art Committee, and William K. Jacobs, Jr. Fund, 2017.17. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: , 2017.17_front_PS11.jpg)
IMAGE front, 2017.17_front_PS11.jpg., 2017
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Betye Saar (American, born 1926). <em>Liberation of Aunt Jemima: Cocktail</em>, 1973. Glass, paper, textile, metal, Overall: 12 1/2 × 5 3/4 in. (31.8 × 14.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchased with funds given by Elizabeth A. Sackler, gift of the Contemporary Art Committee, and William K. Jacobs, Jr. Fund, 2017.17. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: , 2017.17_front_PS11.jpg)