Tate posts "Release Ai Weiwei" sign as museums exert more pressure

Tate Modern -- which is hosting Ai Weiwei's gigantic Sunflower Seeds installation -- now bears a "Release Ai Weiwei" sign on its exterior. Meanwhile, Tate director Nicholas Sirota is among the many museum professionals to sign a Guggenheim Foundation letter/petition calling on Chinese authorites to release the artist. And, in Germany, members of parliament are calling on three museums there to shut down the exhibition Art of the Enlightenment, which features their work, at the National Museum of China in Beijing. Ai's detention, says MP Volker Beck, contradicts the Enlightenment values the show represents.

"This exhibition was supposed to persuade the Chinese nomenclature to think about the ideas of the Enlightenment but in reality, the Chinese government has used it as an instrument to show its strength," he said.