de Young Museum Mounts Permanent Installation by Pioneering Sculptor Ruth Asawa

7/13/2005

San Francisco, July 13, 2005 – The de Young museum, reopening in Golden Gate Park on October 15, will host a room-sized installation of 15 metal wire sculptures by renowned modernist sculptor Ruth Asawa. The permanent installation, which will occupy the concourse level of the Nancy B. and Jake L. Hamon Education Tower, includes a number of her internationally acclaimed wire structures from the 1950s and 1960s that combine interlocking globes into sensuously pendulous hanging forms. Asawa sets up relationships among these intricately woven shapes so that they interact with each other, defining topographic contours in the air. This assemblage of her seminal pieces will provide museum visitors an opportunity to see her work within the larger chronological context of modern and contemporary artists.

“Asawa is one of those artists whose work responds to the conditions of modernity, redefining art as a way of thinking and acting in the world rather than merely as a stylistic practice,” says Harry S. Parker III, Director of the Fine Arts Musems of San Francisco. The de Young installation also includes five of Asawa’s tied wire structures, which were inspired by desert plants. She arranged these organic systems of roots and branches by tying them into symmetrically designed bursts of wire that radiate from a central axis. Using different kinds of metals (bronze, brass, zinc and electroplating), Asawa found that they responded in their own ways to her method, which set up a creative dialogue between the artist and her materials.

Born in 1929 in Norwalk, California, Asawa is a groundbreaking modernist sculptor of abstract forms. Although widely lauded in the 1950s and 1960s, and today considered a San Francisco treasure, Asawa has not been represented adequately by most art historical surveys of 20th-century sculpture. “Because her work uses nontraditional materials and a manual method that appears related to knitting, weaving and craft, it is often overlooked in discussions of modernist sculpture,” says Daniell Cornell, Director of Contemporary Art Projects and Curator of American Art. “Furthermore, her decision to create works that hang, often meant to be seen from below, challenges the standard conventions of sculpture. Through her artistic practice, Asawa reconnects with the Buddhist ethos of her upbringing, magically transforming the commonplace into metaphors for life processes themselves.”

About the new de Young
Founded in 1895 in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the de Young museum has been an integral part of the cultural fabric of the city and a cherished destination for millions of residents and visitors to the region for over 100 years. On October 15, 2005, the de Young museum will re-open in a new facility designed by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron and Fong & Chan Architects in San Francisco. The new de Young will provide San Francisco with a landmark art museum to showcase the museum’s significant collections of American art from the 17th through the 20th centuries, modern and contemporary art, art from Central and South America, the Pacific and Africa, as well as an important and diverse collection of textiles.

The de Young and its sister museum, the Legion of Honor, together make up the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the largest public arts institution in the city and one of the largest art museums in the United States.