A Ruth Asawa Retrospective Finds the Fun in Her Game-Changing Art

In 1973, during the opening of her first San Francisco Museum of Modern Art retrospective, Ruth Asawa held what she called a “dough-in,” a communal experience that was part baking, part art, and part fun. Asawa’s recipe for a batch of baker’s clay, a white nonedible substance, went something like this: measure out 4 cups of flour and 1 cup of salt, then combine it with 1½ cups of water and hand it over to a group of kids to do the mixing. Some 1,000 parents and chi