Ai Weiwei

“What didn’t happen is enough people showing up to populate the structure we had built,” Venable says. But “Art is not for everybody,” says one IMA critic. “Art is for anybody, which is very different.”

Will the value the IMA’s curators provide—challenging our thinking with shows like Ai Weiwei’s, telling us what art we should be clamoring for—continue as the museum is democratized?

Ai’s works—more than 30—are on display in the world-famous artist’s exhibit, titled Ai Weiwei: According to What?

Asian-art scholar and curator Britta Erickson explains that, for many years, Ai worked with found objects—a photo he took of his head after an instance of police brutality, for example, or a pile of porcelain crabs that represents the Chinese government’s efforts to bring him into the fold.