April 21, 2015: Online Art Market Value Jumped 41% Last Year & Ai Weiwei Singlehandedly Increased Art Fund’s Worth by 5%

Opening

In New York …

“Projects 101: Rabih Mroué” opens at MoMA; “Martha Walker: Broken World, Anxious Heart” opens at The Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Art Gallery; “Sound and Vision: Album Art Reimagined” opens at Con Artist Collective.

In London …

Flowers Gallery will host an opening reception for “Glen Baxter: Tofu Walk With Me” from 6–8 p.m.; Pilar Corrias Gallery will host an opening reception for “Koo Jeong-A: Annual Journey” at 6 p.m.; Timothy Taylor Gallery will host an opening reception for Fiona Rae at 6 p.m.

In Los Angeles …

“Grear Patterson: Seek and Destroy” opens at Depart Foundation.

Today’s Notable News

According to a report conducted by fine art insurance company Hiscox, after a 41% increase in growth last year, the online art market is now valued at approximately $2.64 billion. Additionally, 75% of new online art collectors are motivated by investment potential when buying art, and yet art is still not seen as a “major investment,” as 84% of works bought online were acquired for under £10,000. (via The Art Newspaper)

122 missing paintings associated with the Depression-era Works Progress Administration have recently been found in the storage spaces of California libraries in San Francisco, San Mateo, and San Diego. The discovered pieces—just a small fraction of the some 100,000 works missing from the WPA—are predominantly by West Coast artists or portray West Coast-related content, and are valued at around $3 million in total. (via NBC4 Washington)

Two works by Ai Weiwei, Forever (2003) and Grapes (2008), were predominantly responsible for last year’s 5% increase in the net worth of art fund Tiroche DeLeon Collection, which is now valued at $20.5 million. (via The Art Newspaper)

Rem Koolhaas’s design firm, OMA, will design the Chinese Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale. Plans for the space aim to tie the artworks within and outside of the pavilion together through stages and digital projections. (via Dezeen)

The Carl and Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation has named the winners of its newly initiated arts writing fellowship awards in the digital arts, awarded to one established and one emerging writer. Jon Ippolito, the University of Maine’s digital curation program director and new media professor, received the former, $30,000 award, while the $15,000 award for an emerging writer went to Joanne McNeil, former eyebeam resident and USC Annenberg/Getty arts journalism fellow. (via Artforum)

Former Met director Philippe de Montebello will be chairman of the Hispanic Society of America, an NYC organization whose museum and library boast one of the foremost collections of Portuguese, Spanish, and Latin American art in the world. De Montebello hopes to raise $5 million to rebuild the previous space of the Museum of the American Indian for future exhibitions. (via the New York Times)

Graphic designer Betty Willis—who designed the iconic, Googie-style “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign in the late 1950s—passed away yesterday at 91 years old. (via TIME)

Best of Instagram

Via @whitecubeofficial: “Damián Ortega ‘O fim da matéria’ at Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) Rio de Janeiro until 15 June 2015”

Via @modernamuseet: “‘I love sculpture eternally, because sculpture is the only thing that challenges me. But it is also not enough. If I have expressed today what I wanted to express, good, it’s true for a minute, but then I have to prove myself again. So I start a new one.’ Louise Bourgeois. 47 (!) of her sculptures are included in our #LouiseBourgeois exhibition.”

Via @danielarsham: “The Future Relic 03 edition will be released on April 28th at 1PM EST at www.oh-wow.com / I always wanted to own some of the props from my favorite films. I have created one edition from each of the Future Relic film series that is available to the public.”

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