San Francisco is welcoming a new permanent exhibition space for late modernist sculptor Ruth Asawa this coming May, further entwining the artist’s legacy of artwork, public activation, and education advocacy within the city on the centenary of her birth year.
The space, an extension of the artist’s family-run estate, Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc. (RAL), will open on May 9 at Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood with an exhibition curated by two of Asawa’s daughters, Addie Lanier and Aiko Cuneo — both of whom have spent 20 years working on RAL. Referencing the artist’s practice of omitting titles for individual works, Ruth Asawa: Untitled will include a variety of rarely exhibited looped wire sculptures for which the artist is best known, as well as cast artworks, paperfolds, watercolor paintings, and drawings on paper and copper foil.
Henry Weverka, one of Asawa’s 10 grandchildren and president of the estate, told Hyperallergic that the 1,1714-square-foot space is situated on the ground floor and has been outfitted with a redwood wall to give RAL the “opportunity to display sculpture against dark wood, similar to how it was displayed in Asawa’s home.”
“The furniture will be inspired by Asawa’s house as well, with basic table bases and butcher block tops,” Weverka continued. “We’ll also have a replica of Asawa’s coffee table with sketchbooks for visitors to sit at and draw in.”
Per the estate, forthcoming exhibitions will continuously bring lesser-known and never-before-seen works by the artist to the public eye, also showcasing them alongside work by Asawa’s friends Josef and Anni Albers, Imogen Cunningham, and Ray Johnson, among others.
Asawa, who was held at an incarceration camp for Japanese Americans with her mother and siblings during her teenage years, was later prevented from completing an art teaching degree at the Milwaukee State Teachers College on account of anti-Japanese prejudice. Her commitment to fighting for equal access to arts education led her to help found the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in 1982. The new space will also host exhibitions for students and faculty at the arts-aligned alternative public high school, continuing to honor Asawa’s role as an arts educator and advocate in the city.
“Minnesota Street Project was built to provide sustainable, long-term space for galleries, artists, and arts organizations, and Ruth Asawa spent her career demonstrating that kind of sustained commitment to San Francisco,” the organization’s executive director, Aimee Le Duc, said in a statement, noting that RAL’s incoming presence “feels like a natural extension of that shared mission.”
Over a decade after her passing, Asawa continues to leave a mark not only on her home base of over 60 years, but also globally, through various institutional collections and exhibitions. Most recently, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City presented a retrospective of the artist that traveled from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Asawa has also been recognized on an extraterrestrial level, as a crater on planet Mercury was named after her in 2024.
