MoMA is opening 'Ruth Asawa: Retrospective' on October 19, 2025, running through February 7, 2026, featuring 275 works including her iconic looped-wire sculptures, bronze casts, paper folds, paintings, and drawings. The exhibition, co-organized with SFMoMA where it debuted earlier in 2025, occupies 16,000 square feet on MoMA's sixth floor and is the largest show ever devoted to a woman artist at either institution by checklist count. The show will travel to the Guggenheim Bilbao and Fondation Beyeler in 2026-27.
The significance of this exhibition extends beyond its record-breaking scale. Curators have deliberately avoided promoting the superlative, reflecting Asawa's own collaborative and uncompetitive spirit—she was a longtime educator and mother of six who integrated artmaking into daily life. The article also suggests that the muted promotion may hint at persisting gender inequality in how the art world treats male versus female genius, contrasting Asawa's show with frequent 'biggest retrospective' claims for male artists like David Hockney.