Renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has undertaken a tremendous work in his new NYC exhibition, Good Fences Make Good Neighbors. Funded by the Public Art Fund, this project features over 300 new installations throughout the five boroughs of New York City. These works range from banners on lampposts to structures ensconcing bus stops to sculptures in some of New York’s most famous parks and landmarks. Beneath the arch in Washington Square Park, for example, is another arch designed by Weiwei. It’s a tall, white, fence-like sculpture with space in the middle that is cut to resemble the outline of two human figures.

Ai Weiwei's Arch, 2017, by Washington Square Park. Photo: Jason Wyche.

The banners on lampposts all over New York display photographs of immigrants and refugees from all over the world, many of which Weiwei photographed himself. As for the bus stop installations, the exhibition’s web site calls them “urban street furniture” to add seating, visual interest, and a new and thoughtful look to the city’s many bus stops and the people we meet there. The exhibition also features images in spaces normally reserved for advertisements and a netted, fence-like sculpture encompassing the globe at the World’s Fair grounds in Queens. In this groundbreaking response to the global migrant and refugee crisis, Weiwei has named the work from a line of Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall.”

Ai Weiwei's Circle Fence, 2017, displayed by the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Photo: Timothy Schenck.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors runs from October 12, 2017 to February 11, 2018.