Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei is a retrospective in Seattle. He has taken many risks in his work, and has arguably been the most effective modern art activist.
Portland's Contemporary Craft Gallery had early the Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995 in 2010. The Film Center brought fimmaker Alison Klayman with Ai Weiwei Never Sorry in 2015. That film is not hard to stream today. That was adjacent to a loan to the museum under the Oregon sandwich tax scheme of Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold. Weiwei is probably out of Portland's price range now.
Weiwei's autobiography 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows is encyclopedic in its sadness and injustice. It is well worth a read. The artists has continued his activist art project with a focus on refugees. That has been much more intense in Europe than the US with the foolish and expensive "Axis of Evil" wars. It has brought down several European governments, and more may yet fall.
The Seattle Art museum mounts a retrospective of Ai Weiwei's work. It includes 130 works and spans the downtown museum, the Volunteer Park Asian Art Museum, and in the Olymic Sculpture Garden, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Bronze, from May 17, 2025–May 17, 2027.
Throughout the show, the museum shows just about every film on the topic of the artist, many free.
Ai Weiwei at the Seattle Art Museum
https://www.seattleartmuseum.org/whats-on/exhibitions/ai-weiwei Timed tickets required in advence. $37.50, lesser price tiers, Free for members
