My sense, at least on the weekday when I visited the show, was that visitors welcomed the opportunity to focus on the hardships of life in contemporary China as well as on Ai's extraordinary courage as a social activist. Although some museumgoers may be surprised to discover that Ai often favors a chaste minimalist style as he spotlights some of the horrors visited upon the Chinese people by the country's authoritarian regime, others will take the style in stride, regarding it as a generic documentary approach perfectly appropriate for Ai's torn-from-the-headlines subject matter.
Read Jed Perl's review in the
New Republic here.
