Director's Letter Fall 2012

Since the installation of ai weiwei’s Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads in front of Princeton’s Robertson Hall in late July, where they will reside until next summer, I’ve been delighted to see the immediate popularity they have achieved as a new photo opportunity on the Princeton campus—and surprised by the volume of press coverage they’ve garnered. Perhaps I’m simply too close to the material, but I didn’t expect the level of media attention that would continue to be directed toward this artist, who is both one of the most acclaimed of a generation of Chinese artists working in an international arena and also a dissident figure whose critique of the Chinese political system and cunning use of social media have made him a major figure on the world’s socio-politicalcultural stage.

A journalist recently asked me whether I felt Ai’s dissident status risked eclipsing his stature and value as an artist, and this seemed to me a fair question, especially as we consider his works of public art. Is it possible to look neutrally at work like this—or his million-piece Sunflower Seeds, commissioned for Tate Modern in London—without recalling his period of house arrest last year? How are the rich layerings of meaning in the Zodiac Heads—the ways in which they draw from historical sources to challenge concepts of authenticity and repatriation—informed or even distorted by our understanding of politics? And further, how is the meaning of the work shaped by our expectations concerning the democratization both of art and of public space?

Ai Weiwei’s work often appears in public spaces such as Princeton’s Scudder Plaza. Against the rhythmic facade of Robertson Hall and the foreground field of rippling water, the scale of the Heads is at once playful and serious, bringing together the politics of resistance and a universality of form that does not depend on understanding the artist’s circumstances or intent—or, for that matter, that does not require knowledge of the Chinese zodiac. Like most works of public art, the Zodiac Heads gain in richness by understanding something of these multiple contexts, but their ultimate success or failure resides in their ability to operate on different levels. After all, visitors are as likely to encounter them accidentally as
they stroll the campus on an early fall evening as they are to seek them out intentionally as a temporary destination on the Princeton scene.

The physical context of works of public art is undeniably a part of what makes public art such a riddle: how to account for both the intentional and the accidental encounter? The expert viewer and the novice? The surprise of finding a work of art in an unexpected space that can create a subjective experience so wholly different (even for the same sculpture) from such an experience in a museum setting? Many viewers might find the same work of art unsettling or disturbing in a public setting (unsettling because of that public-ness) which they would find merely stimulating in a more clearly or traditionally defined artistic space. 

Such matters inform our work as we seek to expand the Museum’s reach beyond its galleries to inhabit a range of indoor and outdoor spaces across the Princeton campus and to challenge traditional notions of public art as being largely confined to three-dimensional sculpture.The Campus Art Steering Committee, which I cochair with University Architect Ron McCoy and which is charged with shepherding such efforts, recently completed work on a set of guidelines and processes for public art at Princeton. These guidelines recognize the particular characteristics of public environments, while articulating the goal not only of visual enrichment but also of giving visual and physical form to some of the University’s core values, such as freedom of speech and expression, stretching beyond traditional materials to encompass new media such as electronic, digital, or even environmental work, where the space itself might become the work of art. On a campus as visually extraordinary and beloved as ours, honoring the past while creating appropriate new provocations in the sphere of public art will be no small feat, but it is a goal that is critical to Princeton’s engagement with the world and to its understanding of the power of the visual.

James Christen Steward 
Director