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EDITOR'S CHOICE

While the list above reveals the most read arts articles of 2011, we asked The Independent's Deputy Arts Editor Alice Jones to pick what she felt was the story of the most important arts of the year.

Chinese police detain dissident artist Ai Weiwei at the airport

The most important art event of the year wasn't an exhibition opening, or a movie premiere, or a stadium gig, it was the vanishing of one man. In April, the dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing airport on trumped-up charges of "economic crimes", and disappeared.

He remained imprisoned in secret for 81 days, during which time he was interrogated some 50 times. The treatment of the internationally acclaimed artist, best known for filling the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall with eight million porcelain sunflower seeds, provoked extraordinary scenes of outrage at arts institutions across the globe, and angry outpourings on the internet. The fight to free Ai Weiwei united and mobilised the art world like no other story in a year filled with protests and political upheavals.

Long a thorn in the side of the Chinese government, Ai has now become a potent symbol, both of China's creative potential and its human rights abuses. The authorities may have tried to silence him - and indeed, they continue to persecute him with extortionate tax bills and pornography accusations - but the story is now bigger than one man. Whatever happens in 2012, his art and legions of supporters will ensure that his voice is heard.