The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has announced the first retrospective of Japanese American artist Ruth Asawa since her death in 2013. Titled “Ruth Asawa: Retrospective,” the exhibition is scheduled to run from April 5 to September 2, 2025, at SFMOMA, before traveling to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where it will be on view from October 19, 2025, to February 7, 2026.
“Ruth Asawa: Retrospective” will feature more than 300 works representing six decades of Asawa’s career and spanning a range of mediums, including sculpture, bronze casts, painting, and works on paper. The exhibition is loosely organized into chronological sections, with particular emphasis on Asawa’s early works, including those developed from a looped-wire technique she learned in Toluca, Mexico.
Born in Norwalk, California in 1926, Asawa enrolled in Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina, shortly after World War II. There, she studied under notable figures such as Josef Albers and R. Buckminster Fuller. Work by Albers and Fuller will feature in the retrospective alongside Asawa’s works, as well as those of other collaborators including Imogen Cunningham, Ray Johnson, Hazel Larsen Archer, and Marguerite Wildenhain.
A dedicated gallery will focus on work Asawa made after moving to San Francisco in 1949, highlighting her productivity during the subsequent decade. The gallery will prominently feature her iconic hanging looped-wire sculptures, which she developed in the 1950s and exhibited both locally and internationally.
Elsewhere, her designs for commercial projects, such as fabric patterns and wallpaper, will be highlighted. Additional sections of the exhibition will explore Asawa’s engagement with nature and her miniature wire sculptures, and will recreate the environment of her San Francisco home and studio.
“It is an immense privilege to present the full range of Ruth Asawa’s life’s work through this retrospective,” said Janet Bishop, a co-curator of the exhibition. “Not only was Asawa an exceptionally talented artist—among the most distinguished sculptors of the 20th century and a major contributor in so many other mediums—but she lived her values in everything she did, modeling the importance of the arts and opening up creative opportunities for others at every turn.”
Following its debut at SFMOMA and subsequent run at MoMA in New York, the exhibition will travel to the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain and the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland, coinciding with what would have been Asawa’s 100th birthday.
