A new gallery dedicated to Ruth Asawa’s artworks will open in San Francisco this spring. Her family foundation, Ruth Asawa Lanier Inc. (RAL Inc.), announced that the gallery will be located within the Minnesota Street Project in the city’s Dogpatch neighborhood. The first show, which opens on May 9th, will be titled “Ruth Asawa: Untitled.”
Asawa is best known for her ethereal loop-wired sculptures, which use industrial wire to create suspended forms. Born in Norwalk, California in 1926, Asawa spent a large portion of her childhood in Japanese concentration camps during World War II. After briefly relocating to the Midwest, she attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina with Josef Albers. Asawa returned to California in 1949, establishing herself in San Francisco, where she lived and worked until her death in 2013 at 87.
“San Francisco was Asawa’s home for more than 60 years, during which time she developed a unique artistic language, raised her family, and became a leading advocate for the arts and art education both locally and nationally,” Henry Weverka, Asawa’s grandson and president of RAL Inc., told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Opening a permanent space here in her adopted hometown seems like a wonderful way to celebrate her centennial for many years to come.”
“Ruth Asawa: Untitled” refers to Asawa’s frequent practice of choosing not to give her sculptures names. The family told the Chronicle that the inaugural show will feature her signature wire sculptures alongside selections of her paperfolds, watercolors, and cast artworks. Looking ahead, the gallery space will mount rotating shows of Asawa’s works, often paired with works by close collaborators, such as Albers, Ray Johnson, Imogen Cunningham, and Anni Albers. Meanwhile, an annual exhibition will showcase artwork by students and faculty members of the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, which the artist co-founded in 1982.
Asawa’s work is currently the subject of a major traveling exhibition, “Ruth Asawa: Retrospective.” The show first opened at SFMOMA in April 2025, before being hosted by the Museum of Modern Art in New York from October 2025 to February 2026. The show is now on view at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao through September 13th.
