Ruth Asawa retrospective
Guggenheim Bilbao opened the first major European retrospective of Ruth Asawa, featuring over 250 works — looped‑wire sculptures, drawings and prints — staged to mark the artist’s centenary ( ).
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is showing Ruth Asawa: Retrospective from March 19 through September 13, 2026. (guggenheim-bilbao.eus) (guggenheim-bilbao.eus) The exhibition was co-curated by Janet Bishop of SFMOMA and Cara Manes of MoMA, with Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães serving as curator for the Guggenheim Bilbao presentation. (guggenheim-bilbao.eus) (guggenheim-bilbao.eus) The Bilbao presentation is the third leg of a traveling retrospective that followed runs at SFMOMA (April–September 2025) and MoMA (October 19, 2025–February 7, 2026), where organizers presented roughly 300 objects in the New York installation. (moma.org) (press.moma.org) Works on view at Bilbao span productions made between 1947 and 2006 and include tied‑wire pieces, clay and bronze casts, paperfolds, sketchbooks and prints alongside Asawa’s sculptural experiments. (guggenheim-bilbao.eus) (guggenheim-bilbao.eus) The exhibition is accompanied by a substantial catalogue published in association with Yale University Press and produced by SFMOMA and MoMA for the traveling presentation. (sfmoma.org) (sfmoma.org) Ruth Asawa was born in Norwalk, California in 1926, was interned with her family during World War II in 1942, and died in San Francisco in 2013—biographical threads the show traces across her work. (guggenheim-bilbao.eus) (canal.guggenheim-bilbao.eus)
