Tate gallery buys Ai Weiwei sunflower seeds artwork

Britain's Tate gallery has bought a work by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei made up of 8 million porcelain sunflower seedsa portion of the 100 million he brought to London in 2010.

Tate said Monday that it had purchased Sunflower Seeds 2010 10 cubic metres of seeds, hand-crafted by Chinese artisans, which can be displayed either as a conical pile or as a square or rectangular bed.

The gallery did not disclose the price. In 2011, Sotheby's auction house sold a 100 kg bag of the seeds for350,000 pounds (nearly $549,000 Cdn).

In 2010, Ai covered the floor of a 1,000 sq. metre hall at London's Tate Modernwith almost 100 million of the seeds. Visitors were initially invited to walk or lie on them, but after a few days the ceramic dust was judged a health hazard and the exhibitwas cordoned off.

It still proved a hugely popular show. The gallery said the seeds, a common Chinese street snack, represented friendship and compassion, raised questions of individualism and evoked the enforced conformity of the Cultural Revolution, when propaganda posters depicted Chairman Mao as the sun and Chinese people as sunflowers turning toward him.

The bearded and burly Ai, 54, has exhibited widely in Europe and the United States and last year was namedthe world's most powerful artistby Britain's Art Review magazine.

He helped design the futuristic Bird's Nest stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but later soured on the event.

Hissocial activism has brought him into conflict with the Beijing authorities. In 2011 he wasdetained for almost three monthsduring a wider crackdown on dissent, and has since beeninvestigated for tax evasion.