Heather James Fine Art announced the loan of Ai Weiwei’s Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold (2010) and its sponsorship of the exhibition on view at the Portland Art Museum now through September 13. The installation consists of a dozen gold-gilt bronze sculptures representing the animal symbols from the traditional Chinese zodiac. The artist Ai Weiwei has created two series which have toured internationally: a monumental outdoor bronze edition and a smaller-scaled gold edition for display indoors. The artist drew inspiration for the twelve heads from those originally located at Yuanming Yuan (Old Summer Palace), an imperial retreat of palaces and European-style gardens built outside of Beijing in the 18th and 19th centuries by Emperor Qianlong. Designed and engineered by two European Jesuits, Giuseppe Castiglione and Michel Benoist, the heads originally

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