Press Room

The highly anticipated “@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz,” which opens to the public on Saturday, depends too much on the sort of patience and reflection that few people may ever bring to a tourist destination.

Ai Weiwei Takes His Work to a Prison

On September 27, @Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz, a series of site-specific commissions within the historic former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary will debut. Don’t expect to see the artist; he remains unable to travel, though his ideas will be everywhere.

Taking over four rooms of Alcatraz - the former military prison, site of Native American protests and now one of America's most famous national parks - Weiwei's seven site-specific installations aim to prompt visitors to consider the experience of police force, as well as the art as an act of conscience.

The Alcatraz exhibition, opening Sept. 27, will feature sculptures, sound installations and other mixed-media work scattered among various locations on the Northern California island.

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Ai's Alcatraz show is a joint project of the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, which oversee the penitentiary-turned-park, and the San Francisco-based For-Site Foundation, a nonprofit that commissions artwork in public places.

What a difference a year makes. Last September, all eyes were on the bay for the America's Cup, starring Larry Ellison. This year, we're casting our glances in the same direction to Alcatraz, for the exhibition of the dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

In an upcoming landmark exhibition, set to open Sept. 24, off San Francisco Bay in the off-limits areas of the former prison Alcatraz, Ai will present a show cheekily titled “@Large” a reference to the area’s heritage of incarceration, Ai’s own flight from China’s clandestine security apparatus, and the artist’s persistent and active use of Twitter to disrupt China’s forces of censorship that have long dogged his efforts to promote increased respect for human rights in the Asian country.

Finally, details about Ai Weiwei's exhibition on Alcatraz Island have been released. Arguably the most anticipated show of the year, "@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz" will see seven original, site-specific installations strewn throughout four spots on the island, For-Site Foundation revealed. The whole idea behind staging the show at the former prison turned national park is to prompt viewers to question the world's current state of human rights.

Celebrated Chinese dissident, architect and artist Ai Weiwei's highly anticipated exhibition "@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz" will open this fall on September 27th and run through the end of April 2015. The exhibition will feature seven site-specific installations in four different locations on the former federal prison island, three of which are not normally open to the sightseeing public.