Comment on '@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz' preps for big prison break

Box after box of the tiny toy building bricks were unloaded into a workroom at the old Exploratorium, where trained volunteers began snapping them into place to form flat human portraits. Ninety people worked for three weeks on this secret project then the panels were barged to Alcatraz Island under cover of night, trucked up the hill past the cell blocks to an empty building with an open floor the size of a football field. "Trace" is just one of seven large-scale installations, incorporating sound, sculpture and mixed media in the $3.6 million project, which has been three years in the dreaming and planning and nine months of intensity in the making. The international reputation of Ai Weiwei, a Beijing dissident artist best known for the Bird's Nest stadium at the 2008 Olympics, combined with the international tourist destination of Alcatraz, is projected to make "@Large" the art event of the year. "@Large" will employ buildings not normally open to tours: the prison hospital and psych ward, the cell block from the military era, circa 1911, and the New Industries Building where the Legos are. "Not only will the Alcatraz visitor get the typical experience, but they will get the added value of a view of a world-class art exhibition at no additional charge," says Nicki Phelps, vice president of visitor programs for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, which runs the cell house tours. Money makerAlso exciting to them will be the revenue from a 122-page catalog, and hats and T-shirts bearing quotes from the artist, known as Weiwei-isms. The Parks Conservancy and the National Park Service are partners in the exhibition, but the inspiration and orchestration all came from For-Site founder Haines, who had previously shown Ai's work at her namesake gallery on Geary Street and in an earlier For-Site exhibition in the Presidio of San Francisco. Due to the political nature of the exhibition and its site in a national park, final permission had to come from the State Department in Washington, and that didn't arrive until December. When Ai has readied a piece for installation, it is shipped by sea container, and then his Beijing studio crew meets it in San Francisco. Shipping and installation of the entire exhibition is a slow process, and 10 days ago, only one of the seven pieces was in complete form, "Refraction," a 5-ton bird's wing made of steel, with solar panels as feathers. Among those who answered the call were architecture students, artists, nurses, museum staff and park volunteers.