CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/5/2025

Strand Bookstore presents Ai Weiwei and Orville Schell launching 'Ai Weiwei Handbook'

Friday, September 5, at 7 PM, Strand Bookstore presents a launch event with contemporary artist and activist Ai Weiwei, discussing his new book, Ai Weiwei Handbook, the latest volume in the new series from No More Rulers.

Joining Ai in conversation is Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, Orville Schell. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd-floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.

Can’t make the event? Purchase a signed copy of Ai Weiwei Handbook here.

Emerging from a tumultuous background of political and cultural critique, Ai Weiwei (born 1957) uses a diverse range of mediums—including sculpture, photography, film and even social media—to confront issues from human rights abuses to democracy, censorship and the role of the artist in society. Many of his interventions directly confront Chinese history and its current political climate, such as his infamous photo triptych Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995) or his poignant response to the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, Straight. Other, more recent artworks address global crises including the plight of refugees and forced migrants commemorated in Law of the Journey and the documentary Human Flow. Uniting craftsmanship with conceptual creativity, Ai’s provocative and socially engaging art challenges political dogma and makes a plea for human rights. He serves as an example for free expression both in China and internationally. Ai Weiwei Handbook, the latest volume in the new series from No More Rulers, is an accessible, affordable guide to Ai’s storied career of art and activism.

Ai Weiwei (b. 1957, Beijing) is renowned for making strong aesthetic statements that resonate with timely phenomena across today’s geopolitical world. From architecture to installations, social media to documentaries, Ai uses a wide range of mediums as expressions of new ways for his audiences to examine society and its values. Ai is the recipient of the Ambassador of Conscience Award from Amnesty International and the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent from the Human Rights Foundation. His work is the subject of numerous art monographs and exhibition catalogs, and he is the author of 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: Two Lives, One Nation and a Century of Art Under Tyranny in China.

Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society and former Dean at the UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. He graduated from Harvard University in Far Eastern History; studied Chinese at Stanford University, was as a student at National Taiwan University; and did his Ph.D. work at Berkeley in Chinese History. After working for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, he covered the war in Indochina and has been in and out of China since the mid-70s. He’s author of numerous non-fiction works including Wealth and Power: China’s long March to the 21 st Century (2013) and My Old Home: A Novel of Exile (2021). He has been awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Smith Richardson Foundation grant and is the recipient of an Overseas Press Club Award, a Harvard-Stanford Shorenstein Prize in Asian Journalism and is a fellow at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University and the Annenberg School of Communications at the USC.

Ai Weiwei + Orville Schell: Ai Weiwei Handbook
Friday September 5, 2025, 7 PM
Strand at Union Square
828 Broadway
Rare Book Room, 3rd floor
New York, NY