Stories and Photos by Carol Canter, except as noted.
Feature Image: Interlocking, woven-wire sculptures (1950s) from Ruth Asawa Retrospective at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, (SFMOMA) 2025.
Sinuous sculptures suspended from the ceiling of some of the dozen galleries at SFMOMA that feature Ruth Asawa’s breathtaking work surprise, mesmerize, and delight with the transparency, fluidity, complexity, and elegance of their woven wire magic. And then there are the shadows they cast.
With some 300 works in 12 galleries on SFMOMA’s fourth floor, this first posthumous museum retrospective is a revelation, not only as it traces the evolution of her wire weaving, drawing, painting, and printmaking but also as it traces Asawa’s lifetime engagement with her community. A creative powerhouse, she transformed arts education in San Francisco’s public schools and eventually left both the city and the Bay Area a legacy of cherished public works.
A formative trip to Toluca, Mexico, in 1947 introduced Asawa to wire baskets and weaving techniques for “knitting wire by hand without the use of needles or hooks.” She later closed up the form, creating her iconic multilayered lobed organic forms within forms.
Asawa attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina from 1946–1949, an experimental art school where instructors such as Josef Albers and Buckminster Fuller became mentors and lifelong friends. Fuller designed Asawa’s wedding ring in 1949 when she married BMC classmate, architecture student Albert Lanier. Their eventual San Francisco home, transformed by Lanier’s architectural vision, became a vibrant center of art, culture, gardens, and family in the city’s Noe Valley neighborhood, where they raised their six children and welcomed friends and fellow creatives with meals and art projects.
When Asawa found arts education lacking in San Francisco public schools, she stepped up to change it. Her San Francisco Fountain, one of more than a dozen public commissions she created in Northern California, is a telling example of her spirit of collaboration.
The San Francisco Fountain at Union Square, dedicated February 14, 1973, was Asawa’s Valentine to San Francisco. A large round bronze picture book of the landmarks of her adopted city, the fountain is not just a work of art; it is a work of public art and a glimpse into Asawa’s interest in engaging her whole community and beyond. Before each iconic city landmark — from Coit Tower and Mission Dolores Church to the snaking curves of Lombard Street, the Opera House, and Golden Gate Bridge — was cast in bronze, it began as a whimsical sculpture made of bakers’ clay from kitchen staples like flour, salt, and water. Asawa designed each of the fountain’s 41 clay panels with students, teachers, and fellow artists at Alvarado Elementary School in Noe Valley. There, she co-founded, with friend and fellow parent Sally Woodbridge, the vibrant Alvarado School Arts Workshop that spread to 50 public schools at its peak. She was instrumental in founding the public arts high school in 1982, and in 2010, it was renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in her honor.
Her lovely botanical drawings and prints were sometimes offered as a thank-you flower bouquet gift.
The astounding beauty of Asawa’s multidisciplinary art and her larger-than-life story make this SFMOMA retrospective vitally compelling and perhaps the very balm visitors need for an uplifting, transformative museum experience.
IF YOU GO: Here is information on planning a visit: https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/ruth-asawa-retrospective/
CATALOGUE: An extensively illustrated 336-page catalogue published by SFMOMA in association with Yale University Press will accompany the exhibition. Texts on key aspects of Asawa’s art and creative practice contextualize this visual survey. Lead essayists include Anne Anlin Cheng, Janet Bishop, Cara Manes, Jennie Yoon, and Marci Kwon. Additional contributors include Genji Amino, Isabel Bird, Caitlin Haskell, Charlotte Healy, Corey Keller, Ruth Ozeki, Marin Sarvé-Tarr, Jeffrey Saletnik, and Dominika Tylcz.
VENUES + DATES: SFMOMA: April 5–September 2, 2025; MoMA, NY: October 19, 2025–February 7, 2026; Guggenheim Bilbao: March 20–September 13, 2026; Fondation Beyeler: October 18, 2026–January 24, 2027
ORGANIZATION: Ruth Asawa: Retrospective is an exhibition partnership between the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA). The exhibition is co-curated by Janet Bishop, Thomas Weisel Family Chief Curator and Curator of Painting and Sculpture, SFMOMA; and Cara Manes, Associate Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA; with Marin Sarvé-Tarr, Assistant Curator, and William Hernández Luege, Curatorial Associate, Painting and Sculpture, SFMOMA; and Dominika Tylcz, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA.
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