Cai’s work is well worth seeing.
Cai Guo-Qiang, the New York-based contemporary artist who grew up in China and has earned global acclaim for his gunpowder art, won’t be watching for fireworks this Fourth of July. The holiday displays “aren’t really his thing,” his studio assistant says. Curators like Alexandra Munroe, senior curator of Asian art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art, aren’t surprised: “Fireworks are fabulous and patriotic, but to him it’s an art form.” Art lovers have until Sept. 20 to catch the final leg of Mr. Cai’s retrospective, “Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe,” at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, a show that drew over 341,000 people during its initial run at the Guggenheim in New York, the second-highest attendance in the museum’s history, Ms. Munroe says. (Only a 2001 Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit drew more.) – From WSJ