The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) has announced that it will present a major retrospective in 2025 for Ai Weiwei, one of the world’s most well-known and celebrated artists.
Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei will be the artist’s first US retrospective in over a decade and his largest-ever exhibition in the US. It also marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in Seattle. Ai, Rebel will explore over 100 works created across four decades, from the 1980s to the 2020s, offering visitors from all over the world a rare opportunity to engage with the conceptual artist’s wide-ranging body of work. Organized by the Seattle Art Museum and curated by Foong Ping, SAM’s Foster Foundation Curator of Chinese Art, this career-spanning exhibition highlights Ai as a provocateur and identifies his key strategies for disrupting artistic canons and challenging political authoritarianism.
This is a major moment for the Seattle Art Museum,
Ai Weiwei’s work is thrilling, challenging, and thought-provoking, speaking to the most urgent issues of our time. There will be something exciting for everyone to discover in his playful and large-scale spectacles of ideas.
José Carlos Diaz, SAM’s Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art.
The work of Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957) thrives on making familiar life unfamiliar again, consistently calling upon viewers to explore social, cultural, and political issues and to contemplate the ways in which personal and universal experiences are enmeshed. Ai, Rebel will feature iconic works from Ai’s career, including Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995), Study of Perspective (1995-2011), several examples from his Han Dynasty Urn with Coca Cola Logo series, Sunflower Seeds (2010), and Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (Gold) (2010). The exhibition will also debut works never shown in the US, including Marble Sofa (2011), a carving of an ordinary leather sofa, and The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus in Untitled (After Rubens) (2020), in which Peter Paul Rubens’s 1618 painting is recreated in LEGO bricks with a twist: the cherub is replaced by a panda as a humorous reference to state surveillance.
Ai Weiwei’s work cultivates an explosive tension between medium and meaning to dazzle the senses and stimulate the intellect
It plays the subtle line between what is artistically and socially acceptable to provoke shock, laughter, tears, and it makes us reconsider what is trash versus treasure or genuine versus counterfeit. We watch Ai’s commitment to watching those in power and are reminded of our own agency for collective resistance.
Curator Foong Ping
I am delighted to have the opportunity to exhibit my artworks at the Seattle Art Museum, an occasion I have eagerly anticipated
This collaboration provides a wonderful chance to reconnect and exchange ideas with audiences in the United States, an opportunity that has been long overdue. Over the past decades, my artistic and design endeavors have spanned a broad spectrum. I regard art as my life, and my life is deeply intertwined with my artistic expression, encompassing both traditional and non-traditional ways. Living in today’s world, having the opportunity to convey the complexities and profundities of our era through an artist’s perspective is a privilege I deeply cherish. I am looking forward to this exhibition, which I hope will spark both interest and thoughtful reflection among the attendees.
Ai Weiwei.
Exhibitions of Ai Weiwei’s work have brought sold-out crowds around the world, so the museum anticipates high demand and is making preparations for the best visitor experience. To increase access, SAM planned an extended run of six months, beyond its usual exhibition timeframe. Timed ticketing will increase access to the museum and improve flow in the galleries. Ticket release dates will be announced in advance so that visitors can plan ahead. SAM members will have additional opportunities for access, including early access to reserve timeslots, member-only days, and member-exclusive events.
Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei, March 12th –September 7th, 2025, Seattle Art Museum
About Seattle Art Museum
As the leading visual art institution in the Pacific Northwest, SAM draws on its global collections, powerful exhibitions, and dynamic programs to provide unique educational resources benefiting the Seattle region, the Pacific Northwest, and beyond. SAM was founded in 1933 with a focus on Asian art. By the late 1980s the museum had outgrown its original home, and in 1991 a new 155,000-square-foot downtown building, designed by Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates, opened to the public. The 1933 building was renovated and rededicated as the Asian Art Museum in 1994, and it reopened on February 8, 2020, following an extensive renovation and expansion. SAM’s desire to further serve its community was realized in 2007 with the opening of two stunning new facilities: the nine-acre Olympic Sculpture Park (designed by Weiss/Manfredi Architects)—a “museum without walls,” free and open to all—and the Allied Works Architecture designed 118,000-square-foot expansion of its main, downtown location, including 232,000 square feet of additional space built for future expansion. The Olympic Sculpture Park and SAM’s downtown expansion celebrated their tenth anniversary in 2017.
From a strong foundation of Asian art to noteworthy collections of African and Oceanic art, Northwest Coast Native American art, European and American art, and modern and contemporary art, the strength of SAM’s collection of approximately 25,000 objects lies in its diversity of media, cultures, and time periods.
