The visionary looped-metal sculptures of Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) display an unerringly modern alchemy: Asawa transformed ordinary materials into dynamically inscribed space. Educated in a Japanese internment camp during WWII and later at Black Mountain College, she mastered a remarkably fluent understanding of both art and life.

In 1966, Mark di Suvero’s Artists’ Tower of Protest, created in collaboration with the Los Angeles–based Artists' Protest Committee, became a lightning rod for the anti-war movement. Over the next 50 years, as the tower was dismantled, reconfigured, and re-contextualized, history has had its intractable way with the original work.