From San Francisco to New York: Ruth Asawa's first posthumous retrospective travels from its first location to the Museum of Modern Art. Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective features around 300 works that illustrate the breadth of the artist's oeuvre. The exhibition opens on October 19.
She is best known for her wire sculptures, in which she explores the infinite possibilities of the material's form and properties: over six decades, Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) created an extensive, unique oeuvre that always started from simple basic concepts and unfolded a creative universe. In addition to her purely artistic practice, she spent her life advocating for a rethinking of art. In her view, art should be central to society and everyone should be encouraged to be creative. One of her biggest projects was the Alvarado Arts Workshop, which integrated important art and education programs into the public school system of the San Francisco Bay Area. The current exhibition Ruth Asawa. A Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York presents the diversity of her work: in addition to wire sculptures, the exhibition features sculptures, drawings, paintings, prints, and public commissions, complemented by exciting archival material. Some of the drawings on display from the MoMA collection are being exhibited publicly for the first time. The show runs from October 19, 2025, to February 7, 2026.
Ruth Asawa was an American artist of Japanese descent. Her work and vision were shaped by her studies at Black Mountain College under Josef Albers. There, science and art were taught in an interdisciplinary and equal manner. In the early 1980s, Asawa played a decisive role in the founding of the San Francisco School of Arts, which was renamed after her in 2010. Her works can be found in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. In 2022, some of her works were shown at the Venice Biennale.
The current retrospective was previously on display at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and will subsequently open at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain on March 20, 2026, and at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland, near Basel, on October 18, 2026.
She is a national heroine in Finland, but has only become known internationally in recent years: Helene Schjerfbeck fascinates with her original, simple style. For the first time, a major museum in the USA is presenting her work: Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck opens on December 5 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
From November 13 to 30, the Fremantle Biennale took place in Australia near Perth, focusing on site-specific contemporary art. Among the exhibiting artists was Raki Nikahetiya with a sensory installation about the intertwining of identity, displacement, and home.
