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Christie’s online-only auction of 125 works by Andy Warhol (1928-1987), which ran from February 26-March 5, 2013 was a huge success. The sale, which included paintings, drawings, photographs, and prints, garnered $2.3 million, doubling its pre-sale estimate. Proceeds from the auction will benefit The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, which is dedicated to the advancement of the visual arts.

The auction, which was the first online-only Warhol sale, attracted 65,000 visitors and 263 bidders from 36 countries. The featured works had estimates ranging from $600 to $70,000 and many have never been on public view. Highlights from the sale included I Love Your Kiss Forever, a 1964 lithograph of Marilyn Monroe’s lips that fetched $90,000, more than 40 times its pre-sale estimate; In the Bottom of My Garden (circa 1956), a complete book of offset lithographs colored by hand that realized $80,250; and a t-shirt screen printed with Warhol’s Self-Portrait with Fright Wig, which garnered $47,500. The only lot that failed to sell was a graphite on paper drawing titled Madonna and Child (circa 1981), which was expected to bring $30,000-$40,000.

The next Andy Warhol @ Christie’s sale is in April 2013 and will be dedicated to Warhol’s legacy at the famed New York nightclub, Studio 54. Christie’s will host a number of online auctions throughout 2013 as part of an ongoing partnership with the Warhol Foundation.

Christie’s will be holding an online-only auction of works by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) from February 26 through March 5, 2013. The sale, which aims to grant a broader audience the chance to own a Warhol original, will benefit the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

125 paintings, drawings, photographs, and prints by Warhol, an art market powerhouse, will be available. The works feature a wide range of pre-sale estimates, spanning from $600 to $70,000. The online format allows interested buyers to browse available works, make bids, and receive notifications by phone or email about the sale and status of their bids.

Although this is Christie’s first online-only Warhol sale, the auction house will be hosting more throughout 2013 as part of an ongoing partnership with the Warhol Foundation. The weeklong digital sale marks the first time Christie’s has ever offered online-only Post War and Contemporary art sales.

Highlights from Christie’s online sale include one of Warhol’s famous Campbell’s soup cans filled with concrete (circa 1964), four gelatin silver prints of Steven Spielberg stitched together (circa 1976-1986), and a graphite on paper drawing titled Madonna and Child (circa 1981).

The back-to-back American art auctions that took place at Christie’s and Sotheby’s this week both garnered impressive numbers. The auction at Christie’s on November 28 set the bar high when it reached $38,469,650 in sales. However, Sotheby’s followed up strong and achieved a total sale of $27,608,500, exceeding the high estimate of $24,158,000. Franklin Riehlman, owner of Franklin Riehlman Fine Art in New York City said, “Prices at Sotheby’s were nice and strong. Christie’s had a phenomenal sale and Liz Sterling has done a wonderful job reconstructing the department.” Elizabeth Sterling was appointed the head of American art at Christie’s earlier this year.

The top lot at Christie’s was Edward Hopper’s October on Cape Cod (1946), which went for $9.6 million and set a new record for the most expensive item sold to an online bidder. The oil painting, which features a house and small barn from a distance, is one of the last works by Hopper remaining in private hands. Other solid sales were Charles Burchfield’s Golden Dream (1959), which brought $1,202,500; Stuart Davis’ City Snow Scene (1911), which also reached $1,202,500; and Martin John Heade’s Hummingbird Perched on the Orchid Plant (1901), which brought $1,802,500.

Georgia O’Keeffe fared well at both auctions and took the top two lots at Sotheby’s; both plant paintings, Autumn Leaf II (1927) realized $4,282,500 and A White Camellia (1938) brought $3,218,500. “O’Keeffe did very well,” said Riehlman. “There was a lot of bidding.” An O’Keeffe painting titled Sun Water Maine (1922) also reached the second highest price at Christie’s when it realized $2,210,500, exceeding the high estimate of $1,500,000.

Norman Rockwell continued to perform well at Sotheby’s and two paintings exceeded their high estimates when The Muscleman (1941) sold for $2,210,500 (high estimate: $800,000) and Doctor and Doll (1942) reached $1,874,500 (high estimate: $700,000). Other impressive sales included Alfred Jacob Miller’s Caravan En Route [Sir William Drummond Stewart’s Caravan] (circa 1850), which went for $1,762,500 and Arthur Dove’s Town Scraper (circa 1933), which realized $1,258,500.

“The market for early modernists seems very strong,” said Riehlman. “Older works didn’t do as well. Cassatt and Prendergast are spotty, but 15 years ago every Cassatt would have sold.” Out of the one Mary Cassatt work offered at Sotheby’s and two present at Christie’s, not a single piece sold. Similarly, Maurice Prendergast’s one painting offered by Sotheby’s, Park Street Church, Boston (circa 1905-07), failed to sell and at Sotheby’s, Picnic Party (circa 1900-03) didn’t quite reach its low estimate of $300,000 when it sold for $290,500 and New Hampshire (circa 1910-13) just broke its low estimate of $40,000 when it realized $43,750.

“Both houses are being very selective in terms of traditional 18^th and 19th century materials,” said Riehlman. Buyers are much more likely to make significant purchases when the majority of works are top-quality. Despite the declining interest in older works, there was a lot of action at both sales. Riehlman was planning on buying Marvin Cone’s Stone City Landscape (1936), which realized $752,500, a record for the artist. “It went like a freight train right by me,” he said, a testament to just how eager buyers were this week.  

The Dallas Museum of Art announced today that it will nullify its $10 general admission fee, effective January 21, 2013. The museum will also launch an online rewards program that could even make membership free.

In recent years, many institutions have reversed their decision to charge visitors and are now free to the public. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walters Museum of Art in Baltimore, and the Detroit Institute of the Arts have all decided that free admission will help their institutions become more widely accessible, which, in turn, will keep visitor numbers up.

While it appears that the aforementioned museums have started a trend, many institutions in major tourist destinations are not so quick to jump on the free entry bandwagon. In New York, the Museum of Modern Art charges $25 and the Guggenheim Museum charges $22. San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, another major tourist attraction, charges $18. Other big-name museums that require visitors to pay are the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Carnegie Museum of Art.

Held at Christie’s in New York this past Monday, the first in a series of auctions to benefit the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts brought in over $17 million. The sale featured over 354 works by Andy Warhol including prints and photographs. Online auctions will begin this coming February.

Many works exceeded their high estimates including Jackie, a screen print and paper collage of Jacqueline Kennedy that had a high estimate of $300,000 and sold for $626,000 as well as Self Portrait in Fright Wig which was estimated at $12,000-$18,000 and sold for $50,000. The biggest sale of the night was a print featuring a butterfly titled Endangered Species: San Francisco Silverspot that reached over $1.2 million.

Profits from the sale will go towards the foundation’s endowment, and will help the organization to expand their contributions to the visual arts.

The art world can be an intimidating place for an aspiring collector with a modest budget. Artsicle is here to help. Founded by Alex Tryon, 26, and Scott Carleton, 27, Artsicle is an online venture that rents inexpensive art at a low rate. Removing haughty galleries and astronomical price tags from the equation allows a new generation of collectors to figure out what they like. By allowing this often dismissed demographic to explore art collecting, they may be more inclined to make major investments further down the line when their pockets have a little more padding.

Artiscle launched in December 2010 and featured the work of 10 artists. Within a few weeks Tryon and Carleton decided to shift the site’s focus to renting rather than buying. The company went from shipping about 30 works a month to 100. Artsicle now feature 150 artists and has 3,000 works in its online inventory.

New clients take a quiz when they land on artsicle.com that reveals their visual predilections. From there, Artsicle assembles a portfolio that is meant to appeal to the visitor based on their likes and dislikes generated by the quiz. It costs anywhere from $25 to $65 a month to rent an artwork depending on the size. Clients can choose to renew the rental if they’re fond of the work or they can trade it in for a new piece. Buying is also an option and works usually run anywhere from $500 to $2,500. Artsicle keeps 50 percent of the rental price and 30 percent of sale.

As stated on their website, “Artsicle makes it accessible, affordable, and fun to get started collecting.”

While a lot of time, thought, and care goes into the creation of exhibition catalogues, their lifespans tends to be short-lived. Unhappy with this accepted cycle, Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, decided to change things. The Museum’s new online resource, MetPublications, allows users to browse more than 600 catalogues, journals, and museum bulletins, including 368 out-of-print publications. It will even be possible to get copies of 140 of those out-of-print catalogues along with paperbound editions with digitally printed color reproductions through Yale University Press.

Spanning from 1964 to the present, topics covered include art, art history, archaeology, conservation, and collecting. MetPublications includes a description and table of contents for almost all of the periodicals and even offers information about the authors, reviews of the books, and links to related publications and art in the museum’s collection. The comprehensive resource will also provide links to purchase in-print books. If a reader is in need of a book but is not close to the museum or the book is not in the Museum’s holdings, MetPublications will direct them to WorldCat, a global library catalogue. Over time, the Met plans to add publications dating as far back as 1870, when then the museum was founded.

While other museums such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Los Angeles County of Museum of Art already have scholarly resources online, it is a welcome addition to the Met’s offerings.

After two years in beta, Art.sy’s public version went live this past Monday. Using intuitive sites such as Pandora and Netflix as guides, Art.sy gets to know its users and presents them with suggestions and recommendations based on their individual likes and dislikes. Art.sy offers a free repository of 20,000 and counting digitized fine art images as well as an art appreciation guide. Art.sy can already count 275 galleries, private collectors, and 50 museums such as the Dallas Museum of Art, SFMoMA, and Fondation Beyeler as partners.

A start-up backed by millions of dollars in venture capital from art world giants such as Larry Gagosian and Dasha Zhukova, Art.sy already has 600,000 registered users. The site is moving past mere image sharing and has begun partnering with major art fairs, serving as the exclusive online platform for Design Miami/ in December and the Armory Show in March.

Art.sy offers a unique experience to collectors, allowing them to speak with a specialist, connect directly to a gallery, or submit offers on works remotely. A different feature on the site will allow collectors to buy outright as long as the dealer chooses to utilize the e-commerce option. Art.sy plans to bring in most of its revenue from sales commissions on works sold through the site.

Six years ago wholesale powerhouse, Costco, stopped selling fine art amid allegations that two Picasso drawings sold on their online store were fakes. The company recently decided to give the venture another go adding “Fine Art” as a category in their “Home & Décor” section. Nestled between “Bathroom,” “Bedding,” and “Kitchen & Dining,” the foray into the art market seems to be going well. In the past two weeks or so, 8 out of the 10 have sold including a framed screen print by Andy Warhol for $1,450 and a framed lithograph by Henri Matisse for $1,000.

The works are supplied by Greg Moors, an art dealer based in San Francisco who provided Costco with art when they first launched the department in 2003. Driven by the notion of financially accessible art, Moors dismissed the peculiarity of a discount warehouse store selling fine art. In fact, this practice is not exclusive to Costco. Between 1962 and 1971, Sears sold over 50,000 works by such artists as Picasso, Rembrandt, Chagall, and Whistler as part of the Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art. Customers could even buy works on layaway.

Although he did not supply the store with the questionable Picassos, Moors is very careful about what is available via Costco. Most of the works are unsigned to avoid questions about the signatures’ authenticity. He is also attempting to sell the works of more living artists and is avoiding artists who are known to have a proliferation of fakes circulating in the art market.