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Ai Weiwei Returns to New York in Brooklyn Museum Talk

 Chinese artist Ai Weiwei will speak at an event at the Brooklyn Museum this Saturday, Oct. 29.
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei will speak at an event at the Brooklyn Museum this Saturday, Oct. 29.
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Brooklyn Museum

PROSPECT HEIGHTS — Ai Weiwei is back in the Big Apple in a big way.

This coming weekend, the famed artist and activist will speak at the Brooklyn Museum, his first appearance in the borough since his arrest and subsequent international travel ban in China in 2011, the museum said.

Weiwei is set to appear in conversation with Cuban artist Tania Bruguera on Saturday, Oct. 29, to discuss his latest work, which includes five different exhibitions opening in New York on Nov. 5 that address the refugee crisis, displacement and “uprootedness,” according to The New York Times.

The artist currently lives in Berlin and Beijing, the paper said. But recently, Weiwei has been spending a lot of time in New York, posting photos on Instagram from Union Square, Midtown, the campus of New York University, a knish bakery on Houston Street, Katz's Deli and Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal.

 

A photo posted by Ai Weiwei (@aiww) on

Weiwei, 59, made his home in New York in the 1980s and early 1990s and has displayed his work here for years. Famously, his “Zodiac Heads” sculptures went on display in Central Park as he was arrested — he missed the opening, set a month after he went missing in China.

In recent years, the Brooklyn Museum has partnered with him for two major projects. In 2014, the museum exhibited a retrospective of 20 years of his work titled “According to What?” And last year, the museum collected LEGO blocks for the artist in an unmarked BMW as part of a sculpture project in Australia.

The event with Weiwei and Bruguera is set for 2 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 29 at the Brooklyn Museum at 200 Eastern Parkway. Tickets are $16 and include museum admission.