In His US Retrospective, Ai Weiwei Takes Old Ideas to New Extremes

The word “fuck” in giant neon letters, (FUCK, 2020), greets visitors to the Seattle Art Museum’s exhibition “Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei,” the superstar artist’s largest United States retrospective ever. The glowing expletive about sums up the prevailing liberal mood in the country these days—though perhaps not in the way the show’s curator, Ping Foong, intended. Like the nearby sculpture of a human hand making the gesture, (Middle