Ruth Asawa

California Modernist Women - Groundbreaking Creativity
2022-06-16 08:00 - 2023-04-30 17:00 UTC | SFO Museum, San Francisco Airport, San Francisco, CA, 94128, United States
California played a central role in the formation of a modern American aesthetic during the mid-twentieth century. Decorative arts and design reflected exciting new technologies and forms of expression. As modernist artists and designers looked beyond traditional methods and towards the future, some also found inspiration in the handmade qualities of crafts. Many of the Golden State’s most innovative artists and designers were women who faced great adversity due to prevailing gender inequality. The most determined women pushed forward, driven by enthusiasm, strength, and creativity.
To protect themselves from potential disadvantage, some women artists signed only their first initial and last name to their artworks. In defiance, San Francisco artist Doris Hodgson Bothwell (1902–2000) changed her legal first name to Dorr, a nickname from childhood that she preferred. Ray Eames (1912–88) was an artist and designer who did not initially receive full recognition for her work. Aligned with mid-century conventions, her husband Charles Eames (1907–78) was attributed as the designer for all Eames Office products, although the dynamic couple designed together with the rest of their team.
Many artists and designers faced other complex challenges. During the Second World War, Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) escaped extended incarceration in a Japanese American internment camp with a scholarship to Milwaukee State Teachers College (now University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee). After training for three years to become an art teacher, she was denied the necessary internship for graduation due to postwar racism. Asawa became a renowned artist and advocate for art education, and in 1982, she helped establish a public arts high school—renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in 2010.
California Modernist Women: Groundbreaking Creativity introduces these and other artists who worked in California and the San Francisco Bay Area. Ruth Asawa and Ray Eames, along with jeweler Margaret De Patta (1903–64) and potters Edith Heath (1911–2005) and Marguerite Wildenhain (1896–1985), are internationally acclaimed, and appreciation for their work continues to grow. Other outstanding artists including Dorr Bothwell, sculptors Freda Koblick (1920–2011) and Mary Fuller McChesney (1922–2022), potter Eileen Reynolds Curtis (1915–77), artist and designer Zahara Schatz (1916–99), and multidisciplinary artists Esther (1896–1992), Helen (1898–1985), and Margaret Bruton (1894–1983), enjoyed success in their time, yet were overlooked in subsequent years.

Harvey Milk Terminal 1

Departures Level 2, Gallery 1E
Jun 16, 2022 – Apr 30, 2023

Photo © 2022 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc. / Artists Rights Society, NY. Courtesy David Zwirner

The Faces Of Ruth Asawa
2022-07-06 11:00 - 2026-07-06 17:00 | Cantor Arts Center, 328 Lomita Drive at Museum Way, Stanford, CA, 94305, United States
From the mid-1960s through 2000, Asawa created hundreds of individual face masks out of clay. With the Cantor’s Asian American Art Initiative, this wall of 233 masks becomes a permanent part of their collection.
The Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI) transforms Stanford into the leading academic and curatorial center for Asian American art. Alexander and Marci Kwon, assistant professor in Stanford’s Department of Art and Art History, serve as AAAI co-directors. As part of the initiative, the Cantor works to build the preeminent collection of Asian American art at a university art museum.
The Cantor acquired Untitled (LC.012, Wall of Masks) in 2020. On July 6, 2022, they go on long-term view at the museum, marking the first time this work has been shown in its entirety at any museum or public institution. The focused exhibition, The Faces of Ruth Asawa, curated by Alexander, features the masks and three vessels by Asawa’s son Paul Lanier. These special vessels were created with clay mixed with the ashes of Asawa, her husband Albert, and their late son, Adam. Upon Asawa’s death—per her request—Lanier took this material and threw a set of vessels, one for each remaining sibling. The three included in The Faces of Ruth Asawa were borrowed from the family. Their inclusion in the exhibition further demonstrates Asawa’s deeply intimate connection to clay.
Hear from Asawa’s family and friends, including mask subjects, about her process making the masks >
The museum is open Wed – Sun, free with reservations. Reserve here >
End date is open-ended.

Ink, Paper, Stone: Six Women Artists and the Language of Lithography
2022-10-14 12:00 - 2023-02-13 17:00 | Norton Simon Museum
Ink, Paper, Stone: Six Women Artists and the Language of Lithography examines the prints of six critically acclaimed artists who visited Los Angeles in the 1960s to explore the art of lithography: Ruth Asawa, Gego, Eleanore Mikus, Louise Nevelson, Irene Siegel and Hedda Sterne. Each woman received a two-month fellowship at the famed Tamarind Lithography Workshop, founded by the visionary printmaker June Wayne in 1960. With its mission to train master printers and pair them with visiting artists, Tamarind was a nexus for the revival of the medium in America. Though each of the artists in this exhibition had already established her reputation in other media by the time of her visit—and only two had made lithographs before—they all found that lithography offered fascinating, new possibilities for exploring their aesthetic interests.
At Tamarind, Gego, Mikus and Nevelson engineered unique approaches to geometric abstraction, kineticism and minimalism in their lithographs. Sterne and Asawa created imagery derived from literature and nature, sources that had provided them with lifelong inspiration. Irene Siegel alone composed stylized, figurative vignettes that pop with vibrant color and bold lines. In the lithography workshop, these six distinct artists shared an interest in the physical properties of their materials, including ink and paper, which they exploited to convey a sense of the artist’s own hand in the process of making an image.
Describing her folded paper drawings from this period, Eleanore Mikus advised viewers to pay close attention, for “the more you look, the more you see.” Ink, Paper, Stone explores the significance of that observation in the works of art themselves, as well as in the lives of these groundbreaking women artists, who navigated the complex and competing expectations of an art world in which female achievement was measured by a different set of standards.
The museum is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, open from 12-5 all other days except Saturday, when it’s open until 7:00.
Adults $15.00
Seniors (ages 62 and above) $12.00
Children (ages 18 and under) Free
Students with valid I.D. Free
Museum Members Free
Visit >

Generation: The Roots of Making in the Asawa-Lanier Family
2023-01-12 10:00 - 2023-03-31 17:00 | Ruth’s Table, 3160 21st Street, San Francisco, 94110, United States
Top image: Aiko Lanier Cuneo, Dancing Dots and Triangles, 2021.
Ruth’s Table is pleased to present Generation: The Roots of Making in the Asawa-Lanier Family, a group exhibition that brings together four generations from a San Francisco family of makers. Inspired by our namesake, world-renowned artist Ruth Asawa, the exhibition serves as an opportunity to honor Asawa’s life-long commitment to community-based art education and activism in the arts.
The word generation can have several meanings. A generation is a group of people born and living at the same time. It can also mean creating or making. Timed to coincide with Asawa’s birthday month, Generation is a tribute and a testament that Asawa’s values live on through generations – in the Asawa-Lanier family, in communities and organizations, like Ruth’s Table – that share her unwavering belief that creative engagement is essential and can impact the lives of people of all ages.
The exhibition brings together works in wire and lithography by Ruth Asawa; paintings, drawings, and birthday envelopes by Albert Lanier; paintings and a clay platter by Paul Lanier; textile, collage, and painting by Aiko Lanier Cuneo; origami portraits, paintings, and paper construction by Lilli Lanier; and paintings by Lucia Ruth Soriano. All of these artists have worked with one another on public commissions, as teaching artists in schools, and collaborated on pieces in this show.
The work exhibited in Generation spans 57 years from 1965 to 2022. Motifs rooted in interwoven patterns of line, repetition, and dynamic interactions between geometric shapes, color, and forms, appear in all artists’ works creating inherent conversation and visual connections carried through varying media. Together, they form a story of four generations of a family that is joined not only in relationship, but by the curiosity and love of materials, color, and pattern.
Lilli Lanier, Origami Ruth Asawa, 2022. Origami paper. 50” x 40”.
ROOTS OF RUTH’S TABLE
Established in 2009, Ruth’s Table is named after an actual table, constructed by Ruth Asawa’s husband architect Albert Lanier, at which Asawa created her own art and then donated to the organization, thus officially launching the start of the program. Generation: The Roots of Making in the Asawa-Lanier Family exhibition also pays homage to the roots of Ruth’s Table which was profoundly shaped by Asawa’s values and continues to use the power of art to build a more connected, resilient, and inclusive community.
Hours:
Tuesday- Friday
10am-5pm
Select Saturdays
or by appointment

Women and Abstraction: 1741-Now
2023-01-28 10:00 - 2023-07-30 17:00 | Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy 3 Chapel Avenue, Andover, MA, 01810, United States
Women and Abstraction: 1741-Now offers a nuanced and expansive history of the development of abstraction in America, going beyond the traditional art historical narrative of this movement. The exhibition looks at how women from the 18th century to the present day have deployed the visual language and universal formal concerns of abstraction—color, line, shape, contrast, pattern, and texture—working across a wide variety of media, including painting, textiles, sculpture, photography, drawing, and ceramics.
Drawn almost exclusively from the Addison’s permanent collection, the exhibition features pieces ranging from colonial bed rugs and contemporary textile works by Sheila Hicks, to 19th-century Ojibwe beaded bandolier bags and a 2014 sculpture by Lynda Benglis, combining recognizable masterworks by leading abstractionists with work by historically overlooked women artists and makers, as well as objects that have historically been denied the status of fine art. Featured are pieces by Bernice Abbott, Candida Alvarez, Ruth Asawa, Margaret Bourke-White, Petah Coyne, Helen Frankenthaler, Ellen Gallagher, Libbie Mark, Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O’Keeffe, Betty Parsons, Rosamond Purcell, Deborah Remington, Anne Ryan, Hedda Sterne, Toshiko Takaezu, Alma Thomas, Dominique Toya, Penelope Umbrico, and others.
Allison Kemmerer, the Mary Stripp and R. Crosby Kemper Director of the Addison Gallery of American Art said, “Women and Abstraction is a quintessential expression of the Addison’s mission: to offer new insights on American art while expanding the art historical canon. Eschewing traditional chronology, hierarchies of medium, and the restrictive definitions of art movements, it encourages us to rethink our preconceived ideas and opens new ways of seeing the art of this country.”
Gordon Wilkins, the Addison’s Robert M. Walker Curator of American Art and curator of Women and Abstraction noted, “The important work done over the past decades to illuminate the contributions of historically marginalized women has largely concentrated on white painters associated with the postwar, 20th-century New York school’s abstract expressionism. While Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, and others among their contemporaries have rightfully been ensconced in the pantheon of great American abstract artists, the works of many more women—from all periods— remain unexamined by scholars and museums alike. This exhibition proposes a different way of looking at abstraction in American art, inviting visitors to draw aesthetic connections across seemingly disparate objects and complicating ingrained notions of what abstraction is and is not.”
Hours:
Tuesday through Saturday: 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Sunday: 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Closed on Mondays, national holidays, December 24, and during the month of August.
Admission to all exhibitions is free.

Black Mountain College: The Experimenters
2023-02-28 10:00 - 2023-04-15 18:00 | David Zwirner London, 24 Grafton Street, London, W1S 4EZ, United Kingdom
There is no such thing as a Black Mountain aesthetic, no dominant trend that unifies the artistic production of this small community. At Black Mountain, there was a desire to teach students to become more aware of the world around by instilling in them respect for the acts of both perception and process, all in the service of honing their critical skills. — Helen Molesworth

David Zwirner is pleased to announce Black Mountain College: The Experimenters, a group exhibition on view in The Upper Room at the gallery’s London location. Presented in tandem with Josef Albers: Paintings Titled Variants, displayed on the gallery’s ground and first floors, this exhibition brings together works by a group of artists whose groundbreaking career trajectories were informed by the rich visual and intellectual innovations that emerged around Black Mountain College, the famed experimental liberal arts school.
This exhibition features work by a group of artists who overlapped at Black Mountain College in the mid- to late 1940s—including Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Leo Amino, Ruth Asawa, Elaine de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, and Ray Johnson, as well as figures such as Sue Fuller and Sheila Hicks, who studied with and befriended members of this group at other notable institutions during the same period—and examines the threads of creative exchange that were interwoven when the paths of these teachers, pupils, and colleagues crossed.
Black Mountain participants’ ambitions to transform habits of perception, systems of intention, and patterns of tradition have essential implications for understanding not only modernist but subsequent art practices. — Eva Díaz, The Experimenters: Chance and Design at Black Mountain College
The gallery is open Tues – Sat from 10am – 6pm.

Off the Grid: Post-Formal Conceptualism
2023-04-11 11:30 - 2023-05-20 17:30 | Hosfelt Gallery, 260 Utah St., San Francisco, United States
This sprawling group exhibition traces the use of the form of the grid in contemporary art, beginning with some of its most illustrious mid-20th century proponents. From there, it examines conceptual uses of the grid from the 1970s and 80s and utilizes that history to establish a vantage point from which to explore a current resurgence in the motif among contemporary artists of wide-ranging cultural backgrounds.
The grid, as a form, existed in the warp and weft of the first loom. It was used decoratively by the Sumerians in 4000 BC, and later by the Romans and in early Islamic art. During the Enlightenment, the grid embodied rationality, and became a favored form for the organization of scientific material and cabinets of curiosities. Jefferson’s Ordinance of 1785 laid out a grid that would divide the U.S. into townships — both a tool for making sense of an unimaginably vast landscape and for training settlers in values that would support democratic institutions like public schools.
In terms of art, nothing denotes capital “M” Modernism as definitively as the grid. In its early 20th century and post-war incarnations, it stood in opposition to romantic pictorialism. A “contentless” trope — solely about pure form and color — that nevertheless represented the promise of a tidier, more egalitarian future. The grid became an optimistic metaphor for order, and a leitmotif for the hope of stability.
California artist Ruth Asawa is best known for her sculptures made of curved lines — but the basis of her work was always a grid. The undulating forms of her hanging orbs and the sensuous lines of her works on paper refer to the organic shapes and corporeal feel of three-dimensional space, but they also bring to light the historical ways in which artists have used grids to organize space and delineate subjects.
Hours:
Tu, W, F, Sat 10am-5:30pm
Thurs 11am-7pm

Ruth Asawa Through Line
2023-09-16 10:30 - 2024-01-15 18:00 | Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY, 10014, United States
Ruth Asawa Through Line is the first exhibition to examine Ruth Asawa’s oeuvre through the lens of her lifelong drawing practice. Co-organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Menil Collection, this presentation reveals the complexity and richness of the materials and processes she experimented with, emphasizing the foundational role that drawing played in developing her distinct visual language.
Positioning drawings, collages, and watercolors alongside stamped prints, copper foil works, and sketchbooks, the exhibition will expose the breadth of Asawa’s innovative practice through over one hundred works from public and private collections, many of which have not been previously exhibited. Organized thematically, the presentation will begin with foundational lessons the artist absorbed and built upon at Black Mountain College in the late 1940s.
This exhibition is co-organized by Kim Conaty, Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings and Prints at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Edouard Kopp, John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Chief Curator of the Menil Drawing Institute, with Scout Hutchinson, Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum, and Kirsten Marples, Curatorial Associate at the Menil Drawing Institute. After the exhibition closes at the Whitney, it will travel to the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston.
Advance tickets are recommended for best availability. Members may use their membership cards for anytime admission. Corporate partners and other Museum affiliates are encouraged to book complimentary tickets in advance. Learn more about how to plan your visit safely.
$25
Adults
$18
Seniors, Students, and Visitors with Disabilities
(Visitor with Disability ticket includes free admission for one care partner.)
Free
18 and under
Hours:
Mon 10:30 am–6 pm
Tues Closed
Wed 10:30 am–6 pm
Thurs 10:30 am–6 pm
Fri 10:30 am–10 pm*
Sat 10:30 am–6 pm
Sun 10:30 am–6 pm
* Museum admission is Pay-What-You-Wish on Fridays, 7–10 pm. Advance ticketing required.
Book Tickets >

Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction
2023-09-17 11:00 - 2024-01-21 18:00 | LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036, CA, 90036, United States
Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction foregrounds a robust if over-looked strand in art history’s modernist narratives by tracing how, when, and why abstract art intersected with woven textiles (and such pre-loom technologies as basketry, knotting, and netting) over the past century. Although at times unevenly weighted, the diverse exchanges, alignments, affiliations, and affinities that have brought these art forms into dialogue constitute an ongoing if intermittent narrative in which one art repeatedly impacts and even redefines the other. In short, the relationship between abstract art and woven textiles can best be described as co-constitutive, and their histories as interdependent. With over 150 works by an international and transhistorical roster of artists, this exhibition reveals how shifting relations among abstract art, fashion, design, and craft shaped recurrent aesthetic, cultural, and socio-political forces, as they, in turn, were impacted by modernist art forms.
Walk-up tickets are available, but timeslots do sell out and may not be available. Advance timed-entry tickets are highly recommended.
Click for pricing details and to reserve timed-entry tickets >
or Call the LACMA Ticket Office at 323 857-6010, 10 am–5 pm, Monday through Friday.
This exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Generous support provided by The Claire Falkenstein Foundation and The Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation.
All exhibitions at LACMA are underwritten by the LACMA Exhibition Fund. Major annual support
is provided by Meredith and David Kaplan, with generous annual funding from Louise and Brad
Edgerton, Edgerton Foundation, Emily and Teddy Greenspan, Mary and Daniel James, Justin
Lubliner, Jennifer and Mark McCormick, Kelsey Lee Offield, Koni and Geoff Rich, Lenore and
Richard Wayne, and Marietta Wu and Thomas Yamamoto.
Photos: Ed Rossbach, Damask Waterfall, 1977, cotton welting cord, commercial fabric, plastic, satin damask, wrapped, LongHouse Reserve, photo credit: © Charles Benton, courtesy The Artists’ Institute
Andrea Zittel, ‘White Felted Dress #3’ from A-Z Fiber Form Uniforms, 2002, wool, hand-felted, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by David and Susan Gersh. © Andrea Zittel, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

Fog Design+Art
2024-01-18 11:00 - 2024-01-20 19:00 | Fort Mason Center, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, Landmark Building C, 2 Marina Blvd, San Francisco, CA, 94123, United States
Celebrating today’s most significant creatives and leading contributors to the worlds of design and visual arts, the fair assembles 45 leading international galleries; prominent 20th-century and contemporary design dealers; and a weekend of exciting programs.
FOG has become a focal point for the design and arts communities on the West Coast and further afield. The fair is synonymous with a uniquely pioneering spirit due to its bold hybrid approach and intimate presentation of art and design, dynamic programming on-site and its community-led mission to champion art and design in its historic Fort Mason setting. Building on FOG’s longstanding commitment to cultural institutions, the fair’s Preview Gala is honored to continue its crucial support of SFMOMA’s exhibitions and education programs. FOG represents a key moment in which the local and global community congregate to engage in critical dialogue, artistic exchanges, and a shared passion for creative pursuits.
FOG Design+Art offers two ticket options in 2024, a single day ticket or a four day fair pass are available for purchase.
General Admission
Thursday, January 18–Saturday, January 20, 2024
11:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m.
Sunday, January 21, 2024
11:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Single Day Tickets are $30 in advance, $35 at the door and online.
Four Day Fair Tickets are $75 in advance, $80 at the door and online.
Children 12 and under are free.
Buy Tickets >
There is a preview gala on 1/17 from 4-10pm

In the Presence of: Collective Histories of the Asian American Women Artists Association
2024-01-27 12:00 - 2024-04-20 17:00 | Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut Street, Berkeley, CA, 94709, United States
Curated by Christina Hiromi Hobbs
“What is an Asian American woman artist?”
Karin Higa’s influential essay from 2002 recounts the historical exclusion of Asian American women from the male-dominated Asian American movement and the second wave feminists of the 1960s and 1970s by tracing the art and lives of the following Asian American women artists: Ruth Asawa, Hisako Hibi, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Rea Tajiri, and Hung Liu. The author recognizes the specificities of the artists’ personal and collective histories, generational differences, and artistic practices, and she concludes, “What is the wisdom in grouping the diverse and divergent practices of these artists?”
While recent theorizations of Asian American femininity animated through the registers of ornamentalism, inscrutability, invisibility, and silence have been organized around an understanding of gender formation as an individual process, In the Presence Of returns to Higa’s question “What is an Asian American woman artist?” through the frameworks of kinship, mentorship, intergenerational friendship, and community-building between artists in the group.
The Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA) was founded in 1989 by the artists Flo Oy Wong and Betty Kano with the ardent support of art historian Moira Roth as an ecology of support for Asian American women that provided the space for experimentation and the reimagining of “a place of one’s own.” Through the production of exhibitions, slide presentations, symposia, and publications, AAWAA has sought to address Asian American women artists’ historical absence within mainstream art institutions and their misrepresentation within the historical record. Over the past thirty-five years, the association has fostered the creative practices of hundreds of artists and writers in the Bay Area including Lucy Arai, Ruth Asawa, Bernice Bing, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Lenore Chinn, Terry Acebo Davis, Shari Arai DeBoer, Hisako Hibi, Nancy Hom, Betty Kano, Genny Lim, Hung Liu, Barbara Jane Reyes, Pallavi Sharma, Cynthia Tom, Flo Oy Wong, and Nellie Wong. Founded in the same year that Carlos Villa held the symposia Sources of a Distinct Majority at the San Francisco Art Institute and one year prior to the creation of Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network in New York, AAWAA’s ongoing history over the past thirty-five years traces the development of Asian American art from the era of multiculturalism to the present.
Following the Women’s Caucus for Art held in San Francisco in February 1989, Wong and Kano recognized the lack of Asian American participation and leadership, and with the support of Roth the artists reached out to other Asian American women in their network leading to the first meeting of AAWAA. According to Kano, an important recognition that influenced the group’s formation was the realization that “in order to be successful in an art world dominated by white males, people of color needed to control the whole apparatus of art production,” and therefore the association has not only produced exhibitions but also published writing on Asian American women artists and developed relationships with curators and scholars focusing on Asian American art including Karin Higa, Elaine Kim, and Margo Machida. In the Presence Of takes its title from the feeling expressed by members at the early AAWAA meetings that the purpose of the organization at its founding was simply to be together. The exhibition foregrounds the relationships between artists involved in AAWAA as well as forms of remembrance that offered space for healing, reflection, and historicization on the artist’s terms. Through the practices of tributes, gift-giving, and coalition-building, the exhibition seeks to highlight the collective practices between artists that the association has cultivated in order to present an archive that is at once celebratory, messy, caring, disjointed, and most of all, in process, as the association continues to the present day.
The Berkeley Art Center is open from Thurs – Sun 12pm to 5pm.
Photo: Betty Kano. Love Letter #3 (1992) Acrylic on canvas. 36 x 36”

When Forms Come Alive
2024-02-07 08:00 - 2024-05-06 17:00 | hayward gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1, 8XX, United Kingdom
Spanning over 60 years of contemporary sculpture, this exhibition highlights ways in which artists draw on familiar experiences of movement, flux and organic growth.
Inspired by sources ranging from a dancer’s gesture to the breaking of a wave, from a flow of molten metal to the interlacing of a spider’s web, the artworks in When Forms Come Alive conjure fluid and shifting realms of experience.
Undulating, drooping, erupting, cascading and promiscuously proliferating, these sculptures invite a tactile gaze, and trigger physical responses. In an era when our encounters are increasingly digitised and disembodied, these artworks call to mind the pleasures of gesture and movement, the poetics of gravity and the experience of sensation itself.
Palpably dynamic, they proclaim that nothing in the world stays the same, that everything is moving, seething, changing and transforming.
Inviting a tactile gaze and triggering a physical response, When Forms Come Alive is one of the most anticipated exhibitions of 2024 according to Time Out, Evening Standard and AnOther Magazine.
The exhibition features work by 21 international artists: Ruth Asawa, Nairy Baghramian, Phyllida Barlow, Lynda Benglis, Michel Blazy, Paloma Bosquê, Olaf Brzeski, Choi Jeong Hwa, Tara Donovan, DRIFT, Eva Fàbregas, Holly Hendry, EJ Hill, Marguerite Humeau, Jean-Luc Moulène, Senga Nengudi, Ernesto Neto, Martin Puryear, Matthew Ronay, Teresa Solar Abboud and Franz West.
The exhibition is generously supported by the When Forms Come Alive Exhibition Supporters’ Group: Bianca and Stuart Roden, Simon Morris and Annalisa Burello, White Cube, Thomas Dane Gallery, Gagosian, Sprüth Magers, David Zwirner Gallery and Sarah Cannon. Additional support has also kindly been provided by the Henry Moore Foundation, Hauser & Wirth and Fluxus Art Projects.
The Hayward Gallery is open:
Wed – Fri, 10am – 6pm
Sat, 10am – 8pm
Sun, 10am – 6pm

Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction
2024-03-17 10:00 - 2024-07-28 17:00 | National Gallery of Art, National Gallery, Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC, 20565, United States
Want to appreciate more art and design in your daily life? Just look down. The apparel we wear reflects not only our personal tastes and values but also a profound relationship to modern art. Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction reveals the myriad ways textiles intersect with and influence world-renowned modern artists and movements.
Woven Histories delves into dynamic moments when social and political issues have activated textile production and artmaking with heightened focus and urgency. Traced chronologically with 160 works made in a range of techniques—from oil painting to weaving, basketry, netting, knotting, and knitting—the exhibition explores the overlap between abstract art, fashion, design, and craft.
Pictured (L to R): Untitled (S.310, Hanging Five-Lobed Continuous Form Within a Form with Spheres in the Second, Third, and Bottom Lobes), Untitled (S.089, Hanging Asymmetrical Twelve Interlocking Bubbles), and Untitled (S.027, Hanging Six-and-a-Half Open Hyperbolic Shapes that Penetrate Each Other)
Installation photo of the exhibition Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Sep 17, 2023 – Jan 21, 2024), Artwork @ 2023 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy David Zwirner, photo @ Museum Associates/LACMA

Ruth Asawa Through Line
2024-03-22 11:00 - 2024-07-21 19:00 | Menil Drawing Institute, 1412 W. Main St., Houston, TX, 77006, United States
The exhibition presents drawings, collages, watercolors, and sketchbooks alongside stamped prints, paperfolds, and copper-foil works, showing the breadth of Asawa’s innovative practice. Many of the more than one hundred works from public and private collections have not been previously exhibited. Organized thematically, the presentation begins with foundational lessons that the artist absorbed and built upon at Black Mountain College in the late 1940s. Subsequent sections examine the function of repetition and the development of specific motifs and approaches—from the Greek meander to paper folded in structural patterns—and how they recur and change throughout her career. Surveying the artist’s impressive range and expansive approach, Ruth Asawa Through Line offers an unparalleled window into Asawa’s resourceful approach to drawing, with her particular attention to materials, line, surface, and space.
Ruth Asawa Through Line is co-organized by the Menil Collection and the Whitney Museum of American Art, in close collaboration with the estate of Ruth Asawa.
This presentation is accompanied by a copiously illustrated, scholarly catalogue co-published by the Menil Collection and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and distributed by Yale University Press. The book, with more than 200 illustrations, reproduces many previously unpublished works as well as archival materials.
The Menil Collection is open from Wed – Sun from 11-7.
Closed Mon and Tues, and major holidays
Reserve free timed entry >
Ruth Asawa Through Line is co-curated by Edouard Kopp, John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Chief Curator of the Menil Drawing Institute and Kim Conaty, Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings and Prints at the Whitney Museum of American Art, with Kirsten Marples, curatorial associate at the Menil Drawing Institute, and Scout Hutchinson, curatorial fellow at the Whitney Museum.
Major funding for this exhibition is provided by The Henry Luce Foundation; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and Christie’s. Additional support comes from The Brown Foundation, Inc./ Nancy Abendshein; Clare Casademont and Michael Metz; Barbara and Michael Gamson; Dillon Kyle and Sam Lasseter; Franci Neely; Susanne and William E. Pritchard III; Ann and Mathew Wolf Drawing Exhibition Fund; Nina and Michael Zilkha; the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.

Installation: Ruth Asawa: Untitled (S.272)
2024-10-07 08:00 - 2026-02-28 17:00 | Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin Street, San Francisco, CA, 94102, United States
An iconic work by a beloved and influential Bay Area artist, Untitled (S.272) is a nine-foot-tall hanging sculpture composed of looped copper and iron wire, created in the mid-1950s by Ruth Asawa (American, 1926–2013). This second installation in the Fang Family Launchpad is a masterful example of the suspended, abstract works of looped wire for which Asawa is best known. Its airy interior and exterior spaces flow seamlessly into one another, using organic lines that evoke shapes found in nature — including the human body — while also suggesting a gently undulating movement.
Museum Hours:
Thu:
1 PM – 8 PM
Fri–Mon:
10 AM–5 PM
Tue–Wed:
Closed
Photo: Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.272, Hanging Seven-Lobed Continuous Interlocking Form with Spheres in Two Lobes), approx. 1954. Copper and iron wire. © 2024 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Kevin Candland. Photograph © Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

Ruth Asawa: Doing Is Living
2024-11-19 09:00 - 2025-02-22 17:00 | David Zwirner Hong Kong, 5–6/F, H Queen’s, 80 Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong
David Zwirner is pleased to announce an exhibition of sculptures and works on paper by American artist Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) at the gallery’s Hong Kong location. Relentlessly experimental across a range of mediums, Asawa is known for her works built on simple, repeated gestures that accumulate into complex compositions. The artist moved effortlessly between abstract and figurative registers in both two and three dimensions, creating a vast and varied oeuvre that, despite its visual heterogeneity, reflects above all her belief in the total integration of artistic practice and family life. The first solo presentation of Asawa’s work in Greater China, the exhibition provides an overview of the artist’s wide-ranging practice, focusing in particular on her affinity for the natural world, which in turn provided a constant source of inspiration in her art.
The Gallery is open:
Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat: 11 AM-7 PM
Photo: Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.210, Hanging Single-Section, Reversible Open-Window Form), 1959. Photo by Laurence Cuneo. © 2024 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Collection 2: Undo, Redo
2025-02-21 10:00 - 2025-06-01 17:00 | National Museum Of Art Osaka, 4-2-55 Nakanoshima, Kita-ku, Osaka, Japan
The Collection 2 exhibition focuses on the way artists undo and redo existing materials, structures, and history along with the state of their works. As a starting point, we look at pieces by Louise Bourgeois and Leonor Antunes that were acquired by the museum in 2023, and a work by Ruth Asawa that was acquired in 2024 and is being shown here for the first time in Japan. The exhibition also includes many other recent acquisitions.
The exhibition title was inspired by I Do, I Undo, I Redo, a work by Bourgeois that was shown in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2000, and the creative activities of artists such as Aiko Tezuka, two of whom’s works were added to the museum collection in 2023.
Artists:
Louise BOURGEOIS, Ruth ASAWA, Leonor ANTUNES, Tetsumi KUDO, Shigeo ANZAÏ, Sopheap PICH, Yoko TERAUCHI, Chiharu SHIOTA, Zon ITO, Izumi KATO, Tomoaki ISHIHARA, Kei TAKEMURA, Rei NAITO, Yayoi KUSAMA, Ryoko AOKI, Mari KATAYAMA, BuBu de la Madeleine, Miyako ISHIUCHI, Saori AKUTAGAWA(MADOKORO), Tiger TATEISHI(Koichi・Taigaa), Tadanori YOKOO, Miran FUKUDA, Akira SHIMIZU, Pei-Shih TU, Sterling RUBY, Aiko TEZUKA
Jiro TAKAMATSU, Henry MOORE, Marino MARINI, Joan MIRÓ, Alexander CALDER, Yoshihiro SUDA, Mark MANDERS
*Exhibits are subject to change.
The Museum is open 10:00–17:00 (last admission 16:30)
Fridays and Saturdays until 20:00 (last admission 19:30).
Closed Mondays
Hours and Admission

Free admission days
February 15, March 1, April 5, May 3 and 18.

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective
2025-04-05 10:00 - 2025-09-02 17:00 | SF MOMA, 151 Third St, San Francisco, CA, 94103
Ruth Asawa: Retrospective will present the full range of the artist’s groundbreaking practice, offering an in-depth look at her expansive output and its inspirations through more than 300 artworks. It also will explore the ways her longtime San Francisco home and garden served as the epicenter of her creative universe and highlight the ethos of collaboration and inclusivity that informed her numerous public sculpture commissions and unwavering dedication to arts advocacy.
Asawa’s signature looped-wire sculptures will share gallery space with lesser-known works that bring insight into the relentlessly experimental nature of her artistic vision. In addition to Asawa’s own work, the exhibition will include a select number of works by peers and mentors with whom Asawa engaged in creative dialogue, including Josef Albers and Imogen Cunningham.
Member Previews: April 4, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. + April 5–6, 10 a.m.–Noon
Member presale starts Feb 18 and General Public tickets go on sale March 11. Exhibition will be surcharged.
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 Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA.

Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction
2025-04-20 10:30 - 2025-09-13 17:00 | MoMA, 11 West 53 Street, Manhattan, New York, NY, 10019, United States
The Museum of Modern Art announces Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, an in-depth exhibition that delves into the dynamic intersections between weaving and abstraction. The exhibition will include approximately 150 works in a range of mediums—from textiles and basketry to painting, drawing, sculpture, and media works—exploring the overlap between abstract art, weaving, craft, and fashion. Woven Histories challenges long-held notions of the weave as a function of textile alone, exploring the many forms both warp and weft have taken when explored by abstract artists over the past 100 years. Previously on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the exhibition’s final presentation will be at MoMA, with numerous works not seen at earlier venues.
Photo: Installation photo of the exhibition Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction at the Los Angeles County Museumof Art (Sep 17, 2023 – Jan 21, 2024), Artwork © 2024 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.Courtesy David Zwirner, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

Printing Color: Chiaroscuro to Screenprint
2025-05-24 09:30 - 2025-11-30 17:15 | Legion Of Honor, 100 34th Avenue, Lincoln Park, San Francisco, 94121, United States
Color has challenged and fascinated printmakers since the Renaissance. This exhibition explores technological and artistic revolutions in color printmaking from the 16th century through today. From innovative 18th-century mezzotints to avant-garde 19th-century lithographs to experimental works by contemporary artists Kiki Smith and Henry Taylor, the exhibition highlights printmaking across time and technique. These vibrant works on paper reveal the enduring pull of color in print.
Photo: Loretta Bennett (b. 1960), Forever (for Old Lady Sally), 2006, 2006. Color softground and spitbite aquatint etching, 20 x 35 7/8 in. (50.8 x 91.1 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, gift of Paulson Bott Press, 2015.42.44. © Loretta Pettway Bennett and Estate of Luella Pettway / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective
2025-10-19 10:30 - 2026-02-07 17:30 | MoMA, 11 West 53 Street, Manhattan, New York, NY, 10019, United States
“I’m not so interested in the expression of something. I’m more interested in what the material can do. So that’s why I keep exploring,” said artist, educator, and civic leader Ruth Asawa, reflecting on a six-decade-long career. Featuring some 300 artworks, Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective charts the artist’s lifelong explorations of materials and forms in a variety of mediums, including wire sculpture, bronze casts, drawings, paintings, prints, and public works. This first posthumous survey celebrates the ways in which Asawa continuously transformed materials and objects into subjects of contemplation, unsettling distinctions between abstraction and figuration, figure and ground, and negative and positive space.
Asawa made art every day, pursuing the inexhaustible possibilities offered by simple materials such as paper and wire since her days at Black Mountain College, where she studied in the late 1940s. Following a move to San Francisco in 1949, her practice grew exponentially as she produced a body of work ranging from endless variations of abstract looped-wire sculptures to calligraphic ink paintings.
Community was crucial to Asawa, who realized numerous public commissions—fountains, murals, and memorials—from the late 1960s onward, and stood at the forefront of arts education in the Bay Area and beyond. Taking a cue from her own work, Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective offers numerous points of entry into her art, encouraging close looking. It also reveals the model of integrated art practice cultivated by Asawa, for whom all acts held a creative potential and for whom there was no separation between living and making art.
MoMA, Floor 6The Steven and Alexandra Cohen Center for Special Exhibitions
Member Previews: Thursday, Oct 16 – Saturday, Oct 18
Last look for members: Sunday, Feb 8
Get tickets >

Five Centuries of Works on Paper: The Grunwald Center at 70
2025-12-20 11:00 - 2026-05-17 18:00 | Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90024, United States
Since its establishment in 1956 with a gift of prints from Los Angeles collector Fred Grunwald, the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts has evolved into one of the nation’s foremost collections of works on paper. Over the decades, the Grunwald Center’s holdings have expanded through donations and acquisitions, and now comprise more than 45,000 prints, drawings, photographs, and artists’ books dating from the Renaissance to the present. Housed at the Hammer Museum since 1994, the Grunwald Center fosters learning and discovery through its collection, which is regularly presented in exhibitions and made accessible in its dedicated study room. This exhibition marks the 70th anniversary of the Grunwald Center, celebrating its history through a selection of significant works that reflect the collection’s breadth and diversity. It will feature nearly 100 works by over 90 artists, including Andrea Mantegna, Albrecht Dürer, Hendrick Goltzius, Rembrandt van Rijn, George Cruikshank, Jose Guadalupe Posada, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, Vassily Kandinsky, Käthe Kollwitz, Pablo Picasso, Grant Wood, Ansel Adams, Norman Lewis, Elizabeth Catlett, Charles White, Corita Kent, Ruth Asawa, Bridget Riley, David Hockney, Ed Ruscha, Analia Saban, and Toba Khedoori.

Gallery Hours
Monday: Closed
Tuesday–Thursday: 11AM–6PM
Friday: 11AM–8PM
Saturday–Sunday: 11AM–6PM

Free for good!
