This spring, the family of Ruth Asawa is marking the artist\u2019s 100th birthday with the opening of a new gallery at the Minnesota Street Project in SF\u2019s Dogpatch, dedicated to Asawa\u2019s work and the legacy of her arts education, with the inaugural show curated by Asawa\u2019s daughters.<\/p>\n
Ruth Asawa\u2019s family is opening a new gallery dedicated to her work this spring at the Minnesota Street Project<\/a>, marking what would have been her 100th birthday, as the Chronicle reports<\/a>. The 1,714-square-foot space will serve as the first permanent venue for public access to her art, with rotating exhibitions spanning her wire sculptures, works on paper, and community-based projects, according to KQED<\/a>.<\/p>\n The gallery will debut May 9 with its first exhibition, Ruth Asawa: Untitled, curated by her daughters, Aiko Cuneo and Addie Lanier. The title is a reference to Asawa\u2019s practice of leaving works unnamed, favoring process over labels. The show will feature her looped- and tied-wire sculptures, along with cast pieces, paperfolds, watercolors, and works on paper and copper foil.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope the intimate exhibitions at our new Minnesota Street Project space give visitors a sense of who she was as an artist, mother and grandmother and arts advocate,\u201d said Henry Weverka, Asawa\u2019s grandson and president of Ruth Asawa Lanier Inc., speaking to the Chronicle. <\/p>\n In addition to showcasing Asawa\u2019s work, the space will reportedly feature exhibitions of Asawa\u2019s colleagues, including Imogen Cunningham, Ray Johnson, and Black Mountain College teachers Josef and Anni Albers. Plans also include an annual show highlighting students and faculty from the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, which she co-founded and was renamed in her honor in 2010. <\/p>\n The family pointed to the Minnesota Street Project\u2019s broader arts campus as a natural fit, citing its focus on community and education. The Chronicle notes that the arts complex also houses the San Francisco Arts Education Project, a nonprofit that was spawned by the Alvarado School Arts Workshop, which Asawa co-founded in 1968. In addition to helping establish the city\u2019s public arts high school, she also helped establish SCRAP<\/a>, the city’s longtime “Good Will” for art supplies, scrap materials, and fabric.<\/p>\n \u201cRuth’s mission in life was to support the local arts community,\u201d said Deborah Rappaport, co-founder of the Minnesota Street Project, per the Chronicle. \u201cShe didn’t publicize her own work nearly as much as she did the importance of the arts in San Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n The Chronicle reports that Asawa\u2019s recognition has surged nationally and internationally over the past decade. The US Postal Service issued stamps featuring her work in 2020, and she posthumously received the National Medal of the Arts in 2024. Her work has been the subject of major exhibitions abroad, including Ruth Asawa: Retrospective<\/a>, which opened at SFMOMA in 2025 and is now on view at the Guggenheim Bilbao. <\/p>\n As her profile has grown internationally, her family emphasized the need to keep her work accessible in the Bay Area. Several of her public pieces remain fixtures in San Francisco, including Andrea\u2019s Fountain at Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco Fountain near Union Square, and a permanent installation at the de Young Museum. Her work is also held in the collections of SFMOMA, the Oakland Museum, and Stanford\u2019s Cantor Arts Center.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen asked in 2002 why she never pursued a career in a major art market like New York, she replied, \u2018It\u2019s better for me to invest in San Francisco,\u2019\u201d said Weverka, per KQED.<\/p>\n