SFMOMA Unveils Lineup of Must-See Exhibitions Opening in Spring and Summer 2025

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (February 27, 2025, updated April 10, 2025) — The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) announces its spring and summer 2025 exhibition program, including major presentations of work by Ruth Asawa, Kunié Sugiura, Sheila Hicks and more. From fiber art to sculpture to photography and beyond, SFMOMA’s upcoming season underscores the museum’s commitment to modern and contemporary art by local and international artists.

The first major museum retrospective for Ruth Asawa opens April 5, featuring work from across the entire spectrum of the artist’s awe-inspiring practice. Kunié Sugiura: Photopainting features more than 60 works that challenge the conventions of photography in the artist’s first U.S. survey exhibition, opening April 26.

The rich history of the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) and its faculty and alumni is highlighted in People Make This Place: SFAI Stories, opening in July. And the latest installment of SFMOMA’s ongoing New Work series opens August 9, featuring a new commission by the legendary fiber artist, Sheila Hicks.

“The exhibitions on view this spring and summer reflect our ambition to celebrate the intersections between the local and the global, the personal and the universal, through art in all of its forms,” said Christopher Bedford, Helen and Charles Schwab Director of SFMOMA. “This season is designed to inspire curiosity, conversation and connection through a range of exhibitions that explore the influence of cutting-edge contemporary artists while honoring the legacies of historical art figures and institutions.”

For information on all current and ongoing exhibitions, installations and special projects, visit sfmoma.org/exhibitions.

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective

April 5–September 2, 2025

Floor 4

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective will present the full range of the artist’s groundbreaking practice, offering an in-depth look at her expansive output and its inspirations through more than 300 artworks. It will also explore the ways her longtime San Francisco home and garden served as the epicenter of her creative universe and highlight the ethos of collaboration and inclusivity that informed her numerous public sculpture commissions and unwavering dedication to arts advocacy.

Asawa’s signature looped-wire sculptures will share gallery space with lesser-known works that bring insight into the relentlessly experimental nature of her artistic vision. In addition to Asawa’s own work, the exhibition will include a select number of works by peers and mentors with whom Asawa engaged in creative dialogue, including Josef Albers and Imogen Cunningham.

Kunié Sugiura: Photopainting

April 26–September 14, 2025

Floor 3

For more than 60 years, Kunié Sugiura has explored the intersection of photography and painting with an aesthetic sensibility that reflects her bicultural identity as a Japanese artist who has lived in the U.S. since the 1960s. Creating work with and without a camera—and in and out of the darkroom—Sugiura has combined photography with painting and other mediums to produce unique, hybrid works that defy easy categorization. The artist’s first survey exhibition in the U.S., Kunié Sugiura: Photopainting features over 60 works in photography, painting and installation.

People Make This Place: SFAI Stories

July 2025–July 2026

Floor 2

Exploring moments from the rich history of the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI)—formerly the West Coast’s oldest fine art school—this exhibition spotlights works by more than 50 former SFAI faculty and alumni included in the museum’s collection. Underscoring the school’s crucial role in fostering creativity and experimentation, the presentation features work by artists like Joan Brown, Miguel Calderón, Imogen Cunningham, Mike Henderson, Candice Lin, and Carlos Villa, among others. The exhibition also includes a dynamic and quirky range of archival materials drawn from the SFMOMA Library and the SFAI Archive, beginning in the post-World War II era with the founding of the school’s photography department by Ansel Adams. These include ephemera ranging from posters for 1950s Beat-era galleries run by artist alumni, to student newspapers, to flyers and photographs from the punk and new wave music scenes of the 1970s and early 1980s. Titled People Make This Place—after the final 2022 commencement speech of faculty member and alumnus Dewey Crumpler—this exhibition is the result of a collaborative effort across the museum in partnership with the San Francisco Art Institute Legacy Foundation + Archive.

New Work: Sheila Hicks

August 9, 2025–Fall 2026

Floor 4

Across nearly seven decades, Sheila Hicks has been a leading force in placing fiber at the center of visual arts and design. Based in Paris since 1964, she has continually pushed the artistic boundaries of natural and synthetic materials in her work, from intimate weavings with found materials to monumental architectural installations that transform our experiences of space, material and color.

Hicks’s first solo exhibition at SFMOMA will feature a site-specific commission in the museum’s New Work gallery. Here, the artist draws on her longtime interest in the lighthouses that dot the island of Ouessant (Ushant) in Brittany, just off the coast of western France, where crossing beams of light on rocky outposts guide ships across the rugged coastline. The SFMOMA installation will include a monumental bas-relief composed of twisted and wrapped threads, a selection of small-scale hand-woven works inspired by the lighthouse as a marker and pathfinder, a new series of wrapped “beacon panels” in vibrant colors, and a towering central hanging fiber piece inspired by the lighthouse that will anchor the installation. In this dynamic presentation, Hicks will interlace new and old works in a luminous range of colors that bridge the past and present and span space and generations. As Hicks explains, “It’s about the fact that it’s showing you the way . . . lighting your path.”

The exhibition in SFMOMA’s New Work gallery will be complemented by an expansive outdoor commission on the museum’s Floor 5 sculpture garden.

Since 1987, SFMOMA’s New Work series has provided a platform for artists to experiment with a new idea or body of work. The series focuses on the innovative visions of living artists and has played a key role in shaping the breadth and character of the museum’s collection and programming.

SUPPORT

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective is an exhibition partnership between the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. This presentation was developed in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Major support for the exhibition and catalogue is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation. At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, lead support is provided by Randi and Bob Fisher, the Mimi and Peter Haas Fund, Diana Nelson and John Atwater, and Helen and Charles Schwab. Presenting support is provided by Dana and Bob Emery. Major support is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies, Christie’s, Davidow Family Fund for Exhibitions of Modern Art, The KHR McNeely Family Fund, Kevin, Rosemary, and Hannah Rose McNeely, Katie and Matt Paige, and Shelagh Rohlen, in memory of Tom Rohlen. Significant support is provided by the Neal Benezra Exhibition Fund, The Black Dog Private Foundation, Jim Breyer, Susan Karp and Paul Haahr, Maria Manetti Shrem and Jan Shrem, The Elaine McKeon Endowed Exhibition Fund, Kate and Wes Mitchell, Deborah and Kenneth Novack, the Bernard and Barbro Osher Exhibition Fund, Nancy and Alan Schatzberg, Lydia Shorenstein, and David Zwirner. Meaningful support is provided by the Mary Jane Elmore West Coast Exhibition Fund, Jessica and Matt Farron, Hellman & Friedman LLC, Maryellen and Frank Herringer, Rummi and Arun Sarin Painting and Sculpture Fund, Roselyne Chroman Swig, Diane B. Wilsey, and Pat Wilson. Major support for the catalogue is provided by Denise Littlefield Sobel. Meaningful support for the catalogue is provided by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.

Lead support for Kunié Sugiura: Photopainting is provided by the Stone Charitable Remainder Trust. Major support is provided by the Pritzker Exhibition Fund in Photography. Significant support is provided by Katie Hall and Tom Knutsen, and Nion McEvoy and Leslie Berriman. Meaningful support is provided by The Black Dog Private Foundation and Kate and Wes Mitchell.

Lead support for New Work: Sheila Hicks is provided by Randi and Bob Fisher. Significant support is provided by Robin Wright and Ian Reeves. Meaningful support is provided by Alka and Ravin Agrawal, and Adriane Iann and Christian Stolz.

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San Francisco, CA 94103

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the United States and a thriving cultural center for the Bay Area. Our remarkable collection of painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design and media arts is housed in a LEED Gold-certified building designed by the global architects Snøhetta and Mario Botta. In addition to our seven gallery floors, SFMOMA offers more than 47,000 square feet of free, art-filled public space open to all.

Visit sfmoma.org or call 415.357.4000 for more information.

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Image Credits:

Kunié Sugiura, Sidewalk Palms, 1980; Dallas Museum of Art, Lay Family Acquisition Fund; © Kunié Sugiura, courtesy Dallas Museum of Art

Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.046a-d, Hanging Group of Four, Two-Lobed Forms), 1961; Collection of Diana Nelson and John Atwater, promised gift to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; ©2025 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, courtesy David Zwirner; photo: Laurence Cuneo

Kunié Sugiura, after Electric Dress Ap, Pink, 2001-2; Private Collection; © Kunié Sugiura; photo: Dario Lasagni

Carlos Villa, Painted Cloak, 1970-71, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee Fund purchase, © Estate of Carlos Villa, photo: Katherine Du Tiel

Sheila Hicks, Scarlet in Orbit, 2023; courtesy the artist