Forum From the Archives: SF MOMA Ruth Asawa Retrospective Celebrates Her Art and Life as Educator

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 7 July 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“An artist is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special,” said San Francisco artist Ruth Asawa. From her studio in her home in Noe Valley, Asawa created crocheted wire sculptures whose shadows are just as evocative as the art itself. But as the mother of six, Asawa was also passionate about arts education and teaching. As a new retrospective of her work and life opens at SF MOMA, we talk about Asawa’s legacy as an artist, teacher, and community member as part of our Bay Area Legends series. Guests: Janet Bishop, Thomas Weisel Family chief curator, SFMOMA; She co-curated the exhibition Ruth Asawa: Retrospective Terry Kochanski, executive director, SCRAP Andrea Jepson, close friend of Ruth Asawa; Jepson served as the model for the fountain "Andrea" in Ghiradelli Square, and also worked with Asawa on her public school education projects Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:46.2	From KQED.
0:47.5	Thank you, From Kikudian, San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal, and this week we're listening back to our recent
1:04.1	interviews with and about Bay Area writers, artists, and thinkers, the ones who make the Bay Area
1:09.6	great.
1:10.3	And boy, was Ruthawa, one of those.
1:12.8	She was a sculptor and artist who, in her own words, invested in San Francisco and were so lucky she did.
1:19.6	A new retrospective at SF MoMA shows off how gorgeous her work really was from the mid-40s
1:26.5	until her last tender drawings of the plants
1:29.3	in her garden. We'll talk about her celebrated woven wire sculptures as well as her legacy
1:34.5	in the Bay Area. It's coming up next right after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:54.3	Let me get this out of the way.
1:55.4	The new Ruth Asawa retrospective at SFMoma is outstanding.
2:00.4	One reason is that Asawa's famous gossamer wire
	...

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