Ruth Asawa spent her life lifting up San Francisco’s arts community, and now the city is finally giving her the permanent spotlight she deserves. This May, Asawa’s family is opening a brand-new gallery dedicated entirely to her work at the Minnesota Street Project in Dogpatch, marking what would have been her 100th birthday.

If you’ve walked past Andrea’s Fountain at Ghirardelli Square or the San Francisco Fountain near Union Square, you’ve already experienced Asawa’s genius. But for decades, her most famous works remained largely inaccessible to the public. The new 1,714-square-foot gallery changes that, offering the first permanent venue for people to dive deep into her art. When the space opens on May 9 with its inaugural exhibition, you’ll be able to see her stunning looped-wire sculptures, cast pieces, paperfolds, watercolors, and works on copper foil all in one place.

The first show, titled “Ruth Asawa: Untitled”, is being curated by her daughters, Aiko Cuneo and Addie Lanier. The title is a perfect reflection of Asawa’s philosophy, she deliberately left most of her works unnamed because she cared way more about the creative process than slapping a label on things. Her grandson, Henry Weverka, explained that the intimate exhibitions will give visitors “a sense of who she was as an artist, mother and grandmother and arts advocate”.

But the gallery isn’t just about celebrating Asawa herself. The space will also feature rotating exhibitions of her colleagues, think Imogen Cunningham, Ray Johnson, and the Albers, plus an annual showcase of students and faculty from the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, the public high school she co-founded and is now named after her.

What makes this location especially fitting is the Minnesota Street Project’s commitment to community and education. The arts complex already houses the San Francisco Arts Education Project, which traces its roots back to the Alvarado School Arts Workshop that Asawa co-founded in 1968. Beyond that, she helped create SCRAP, the city’s legendary “Good Will” for art supplies and scrap materials that artists still rely on today.

Asawa’s national and international recognition has exploded over the past decade. The U.S. Postal Service featured her work on stamps in 2020, she received the National Medal of the Arts posthumously in 2024, and her retrospective at SFMOMA last year is currently traveling to the Guggenheim Bilbao. Yet despite all that global attention, her family wanted to make sure her legacy stayed rooted right here in the Bay Area. As Asawa herself said back in 2002 when asked why she never moved to New York’s art market: “It’s better for me to invest in San Francisco”. Now, finally, San Francisco is investing back.

The gallery opens May 9 at the Minnesota Street Project.