Every first Thursday of the month at Seattle Art Museum and Seattle Asian Art Museum is FREE admission to the whole museum including their current show. Tickets (free) are available either online or onsite and are used to time the entry of people attending. This is a wonderful way to get out there and experience the arts! Which is exactly what we did this month to see Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei. I personally didn’t know much about Ai Weiwei as an artist and was curious to see what he created without having any preconceived ideas. Visceral I guess is how I would describe it; anger and implicit agitation in many of the pieces. Which makes sense when you read about his activism against government corruption. Mainly seeking to defend freedom of speech, expression, and justice, both his art and meaning occupy space in an unpleasant but necessary way. Surface level though, some of it is just nice to look at too. The artist’s statement is that “Art should be a nail in the eye, a spike in the flesh, gravel in the shoe.” So if that sounds like an intriguing time to you go check out the exhibitions of Ai Weiwei at both the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) and the Seattle Asian Art Museum, on view through September 7th, 2025.