Carol Vogel’s column somewhat buries the Hirshhorn’s acquisition of Ai Weiwei’s Cube Light inside an item about the arrival of the Ai Weiwei retrospective from Japan.
His retrospective, which will include 40 major works filling 16,000 square feet of the museum, originated at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo in 2009. The artist gave it the title “According to What?,” a nod to Jasper Johns, whose seminal painting with a nearly identical name from 1964, a mural-size pastiche of coded signs and symbols, was an inspiration to Mr. Ai.
The retrospective will include a new acquisition made by the Hirshhorn: “Cube Light,” a 2008 work from his popular chandelier series: large-scale installations composed of thousands of glass crystals that he began in 2002. This work is particularly large, about 14 cubic feet.
“The show at the Mori had another chandelier that was not coming here,” Mr. Brougher said. “And when we asked his studio if they had another one to take its place, they showed me this one, and I was totally blown away.”
Ai Weiwei Exhibition at the Hirshhorn (Inside Art/New York Times)
