AT many museums, visitors brandishing mobile phone cameras – or the dreaded selfie stick – are told in no uncertain terms that such behaviour will not be tolerated.
But at the Royal Academy’s next blockbuster show, it will be positively encouraged.
The Piccadilly institution is to stage an exhibition of works by the celebrated artist Ai Weiwei, who is banned by the authorities from leaving his native China.
In an attempt to disseminate his work as widely as possible, including within his homeland, the Royal Academy is urging visitors to take as many photographs as they like, and to post them online.
“Apologies, but there will be unlimited social media allowed in this show,” said Tim Marlow, the Academy’s artistic director. “It is essential.”
Adrian Locke, the show’s co-curator, said the artist “wants people to come and take pictures of the works, or themselves with the works, and do with those images what they want”.
Selfie sticks will be allowed, but Mr Marlow said he hoped users would not miss the point. “If they want to do that, then fine, but we will try to get them to focus on the work rather than the selfies. We want to disseminate this show and Weiwei’s work to a global audience,” he explained.
An outspoken critic of the Chinese government, Ai was arrested in 2011 and later accused of tax evasion. Although no longer in custody, and not under strict house arrest, he is barred from travelling abroad, and there are at least 20 security cameras trained on his Beijing compound.
The artist has decorated each camera with red lanterns, and his situation is referenced in his work Surveillance Camera, which will feature in the exhibition. It is a camera carved in marble from the quarry that supplied stone for the Forbidden City and Chairman Mao’s tomb.
Unable to visit the Royal Academy in person, Ai has been planning his installations by taking virtual tours of the building online, and sending instructions via email and Skype.
The curators have made several trips to China to visit him, and a team of assistants will fly over from China.
One of the greatest logistical challenges will be the installation of Straight, a sculpture which, at 90 tons, is the heaviest ever shown in the Royal Academy. It has required the expertise of an architect and structural engineer to ensure that the floors of the 19th century building can take the weight.
To make the work, Ai and his assistants covertly collected hundreds of twisted steel rods from buildings destroyed by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.
The rods were transported to Beijing, straightened by hand and arranged in a pattern resembling the earthquake’s seismic waves. It is a monument to the victims, and a critique of China’s construction industry.
Recent controversial works include Remains (2015), porcelain replicas of bones discovered during an archaeological dig that were thought to be those of an unknown intellectual who died in a “re-education” camp during the Cultural Revolution.
The exhibition spans 20 years of the artist’s career. It runs from Sept 19 to Dec 13.