A large-scale public art project by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, to occupy the Pulitzer Fountain outside the Plaza Hotel starting early next month, will go forward even if Ai, who was detained by the Chinese authorities on Sunday, is unable to be present, reports Robin Pogrebin for the New York Times. Ai’s twelve-piece sculpture, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, is scheduled to be displayed from May 2 and through July 15 at Fifty-Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue. It is the first major outdoor exhibition to be presented on the site of the fountain, according to the organizers. The installation was inspired by the fabled fountain-clock of the Yuanming Yuan, an eighteeth-century imperial retreat just outside Beijing. Designed by two European Jesuit missionaries at the behest of the Manchu Emperor Qianlong, the clock featured each animal of the Chinese zodiac spouting water at two-hour intervals. In 1860 French and British troops ransacked the Yuanming Yuan, pillaging the heads. Seven of them—the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, horse, monkey and boar—have since been located. In a series of interviews for a book about the project, Ai said New York was particularly suited to his sculpture. “It’s not one kind of people,” he said, adding that its residents came from all over the world and included many minorities. “It’s a zodiac city.”
"But because Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads is animal heads, I think it’s something that everyone can have some understanding of, including children and people who are not in the art world. I think it’s more important to show your work to the public. That’s what I really care about. When Andy Warhol painted Mao in the 1960s and 1970s, I don’t think many people understood Mao, either—it was just this image that people knew, like Marilyn Monroe or somebody. So they might see these zodiac animals like that—like Mickey Mouse. They’re just animals. Eleven real animals and one mystic animal." Ai Weiwei
