Award-winning artist Alison Saar ’78’s 2012 sculpture Weight is one of the featured works in an art installation at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on January 25. The installation will also include David Boxer’s The Black Books and other works that look at social justice, history, identity and freedom.
Saar was an art history and fine arts double major at Scripps. She went on to create several public works including a memorial to Harriet Tubman in South Harlem and a monument titled The Salon in the Charles-Aznavour Garden on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris unveiled during the opening of the city’s Olympic Games in 2024.
Her work was written about by renowned author bell hooks in her book Art on My Mind, which was recently featured in Hyperallergic’s list of “10 Old Art Books to Read in the New Year.”