Ai Weiwei, the most visible and outspoken Chinese artist of our time, was detained by the Chinese government on April 3rd. The official reasons given are vague and Mr. Ai remains missing. The artist was to have been in New York yesterday for the unveiling of his installation of Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads at the Pulitzer Fountain on Fifth Avenue and 59^th Street. Due to the capture and death of Osama Bin Laden on Sunday, however, the unveiling, by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, has been postponed until tomorrow at 8:30 am.

The 10-foot-high bronze sculptures are Mr. Ai’s reinterpretation of the twelve bronze animal heads representing the traditional Chinese zodiac that once crowned the famed fountain-clock of the Yuanming Yuan, an imperial retreat in Beijing. Designed in the 18th century by two European Jesuits serving in the court of the Qing dynasty Emperor Qianlong, the twelve zodiac animal heads were originally sited in the European-style gardens of the Yuanming Yuan. In 1860, the Yuanming Yuan was ransacked by French and British troops, and the heads were pillaged.

Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads remained under wraps yesterday when the unveiling was postponed. Photos: Peggy Roalf.

In re-interpreting these objects on an oversized scale, Ai Weiwei focuses attention on questions of looting and repatriation, while extending his ongoing exploration of the fake and the copy in relation to the original in today’s consumer culture.

The artist is perhaps best known in the West for the sports stadium he helped to conceive for the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, working with the Swiss architectural firm Herzog de Meuron. The Bird’s Nest stadium is covered with a web of steel beams held together by hundreds of unique connections. Mr. Ai said that his design represents the voices of disparate members in today’s global society all speaking together. At the time of the Olympic Games, the Chinese government stifled commentary on this subject and instead promoted the building’s modern design as an expression of it’s social goals. Mr. Ai boycotted the games and said, “When I helped conceive Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium, I wanted it to represent freedom, not autocracy: China must change.”

In an interview last year, Mr. Ai said that New York was particularly suited to his sculpture. “It’s not one kind of people,” he said, adding that its residents came from all over the world and included many minorities. “It’s a zodiac city.”

Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads at the Pulitzer Fountain will be on display there through July 2011, with additional international and domestic venues to follow. The installation is accompanied by Full Circle: Ai Weiwei and the Emperor's Fountain an exhibition at the Arsenal Gallery, located on the third floor of the Arsenal Building (Central Park at Fifth Avenue and 64th Street, 212-360-8163, nycgovparks.org), which will give viewers additional background on the Chinese zodiac fountain-clock that inspired Ai Weiwei’s work, and the emperor who commissioned it.