![BREAKING: Ai Weiwei Arrested and Detained in Beijing, Current Status Unknown [LIVEBLOG]](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/size/w600/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2011/04/awwarrest_home.jpg)
News
Approximately 14 hours ago just before a planned flight to Hong Kong, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has been arrested and detained at the Beijing airport. 10 hours ago, police raided Ai's studio on the outskirts of Beijing. Ai's status is now unknown: his phone is off, and power has been cut to the studi
Opinion
PBS documentary show Frontline features Alison Klayman's work filming Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's tumultuous past two years. The journalist has followed Ai through art exhibitions and political scandals alike, interviewing the artist and his family as well as the Chinese artistic community in a power
Opinion
What's your sign? Chinese artist and international icon Ai Weiwei will be bringing his own custom-designed set of Zodiac sculptures to New York City's Plaza Hotel from May 2 through July 15, reports the New York Times. The works seem harmless, but they have a historical context that gives them a dee
![The Worst Ai Weiwei Ever [UPDATE]](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/size/w600/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2011/03/worstaww_home.jpg)
Opinion
The Armory Show 2011, though not mind-blowing, certainly had its highlights. But one piece that made me look twice, and then fall into a deep pit of failed artistic expectation, was Ai Weiwei's “My Surveillance Camera” (2010) at Galerie Urs Meile. It's a surveillance camera, but made of marble. Get
News
With Sotheby's announcement of their sale of Guy Ullens' collection of Chinese contemporary art comes news that Ullens is divesting himself of his Chinese contemporary art museum in Beijing, handing it over to long-term Chinese partners. A major Ai Weiwei exhibition planned at the space was recently
Opinion
Happy Chinese New Year! The Year of the Rabbit began this month, and fireworks have been rocketing off in Chinese cities ever since. In celebration, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s FAKE design office has created a contemporary version of a Chinese New Year’s tradition: Door Gods for 2011 (seen above). Th
News
There's a pile of sunflower seeds on sale at Sotheby's upcoming February 15 Contemporary Art Evening Auction, and it's going for an equally large pile of money. How does $120,000 for 100 kilograms of seeds sound? But these aren't just any seeds: they're the same hand-crafted porcelain replicas that
Art
MoMA photography curator Roxana Marcoci knows that we are experiencing a “renaissance of performance”. The show she has curated in collaboration with Eva Respini, Staging Action: Performance in Photography since 1960 [http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1100], will explore the role of the
Opinion
Ai Weiwei is a media sensation, and that's not a bad thing. The artist’s pioneering works, relentless activism and life-broadcasting on Twitter and other media have turned Ai the artist into Ai the figurehead. His role as a pioneer of contemporary Chinese art in the Western world, taking on landmark
News
In Fall of 2010, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was requested by government officials to vacate his newly built Shanghai studio so that it could be demolished. The weird thing is that the Shanghai city government were the ones to ask Ai to build the studio. Following a blow-out demolition party on Novembe
News
In advance of the awarding of the Nobel Prize to imprisoned Chinese dissident writer Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese government severely restricted travel for a group of liberal intellectuals who they fear may have attempted to attend the ceremony. Ai Weiwei was among those banned, though the artist recentl
Art
There's no point in giving you a "review" of the mothership of art fairs in Miami, Art Basel Miami Beach, so I thought a photo essay with some observations were more appropriate. I admit that I got a little bored after three hours of wandering around. I found myself seeing the same thing and getting