Man Smashes AI Weiwei Sculpture at Italy Art Show Opening

“Porcelaine Cube” by artist Ai Weiwei is pictured after being destroyed by a man during the opening exhibition, in Bologna, Italy, September 20, 2024. (Genus Bononiae Press Office/Handout via Reuters)
“Porcelaine Cube” by artist Ai Weiwei is pictured after being destroyed by a man during the opening exhibition, in Bologna, Italy, September 20, 2024. (Genus Bononiae Press Office/Handout via Reuters)
TT

Man Smashes AI Weiwei Sculpture at Italy Art Show Opening

“Porcelaine Cube” by artist Ai Weiwei is pictured after being destroyed by a man during the opening exhibition, in Bologna, Italy, September 20, 2024. (Genus Bononiae Press Office/Handout via Reuters)
“Porcelaine Cube” by artist Ai Weiwei is pictured after being destroyed by a man during the opening exhibition, in Bologna, Italy, September 20, 2024. (Genus Bononiae Press Office/Handout via Reuters)

A man shattered a sculpture by Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei on Friday during the opening of his exhibition at Palazzo Fava in the Italian city of Bologna, a spokesperson for the show said.

Footage from CCTV cameras - posted on Ai Weiwei's Instagram account - showed a man vigorously pushing the sculpture over, breaking it and then holding a piece of it over his head.

The sculpture targeted was the artist's large blue and white "Porcelain Cube", the spokesperson said.

The exhibit's curator, Arturo Galansino, said the perpetrator was well-known in the art world.

"Unfortunately, I know the author of this inconsiderate gesture from a series of disturbing and damaging episodes over the years involving various exhibitions and institutions in Florence," said Galansino.

The police in Bologna told local media a 57-year old Czech man had been arrested after being stopped by the museum's security. The police could not immediately be reached for comment.

The spokesperson said the art show, entitled "Who am I?" had opened on Saturday as normal and that the oeuvre will be replaced by a life-size print of the cube. The exhibition is due to run until May 4.

"Ai Weiwei worried that no one was hurt and then asked that the remains of the work be covered and taken away," he said.

It was not clear how the man had entered the building during the invite-only event on Friday.



Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
TT

Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)

Thousands of tourists, pagans, druids and people simply yearning for the promise of spring marked the dawn of the shortest day of the year at the ancient Stonehenge monument on Saturday.

Revelers cheered and beat drums as the sun rose at 8:09 a.m. (0809 GMT) over the giant standing stones on the winter solstice — the shortest day and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. No one could see the sun through the low winter cloud, but that did not deter a flurry of drumming, chanting and singing as dawn broke.

There will be less than eight hours of daylight in England on Saturday — but after that, the days get longer until the summer solstice in June.

The solstices are the only occasions when visitors can go right up to the stones at Stonehenge, and thousands are willing to rise before dawn to soak up the atmosphere.

The stone circle, whose giant pillars each took 1,000 people to move, was erected starting about 5,000 years ago by a sun-worshiping Neolithic culture, according to The AP. Its full purpose is still debated: Was it a temple, a solar calculator, a cemetery, or some combination of all three?

In a paper published in the journal Archaeology International, researchers from University College London and Aberystwyth University said the site on Salisbury Plain, about 128 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of London, may have had political as well as spiritual significance.

That follows from the recent discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones — the unique stone lying flat at the center of the monument, dubbed the “altar stone” — originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles north of the site. Some of the other stones were brought from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) to the west,

Lead author Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology said the geographical diversity suggests Stonehenge may have served as a “monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”