Events

January 9 – In Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian Institution displays the art of Winslow Homer for 6 weeks.
February 2 – Ten paintings are defaced in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
August 8 – Iain Macmillan photographs the cover picture for The Beatles' album Abbey Road in London.
October 5 – Monty Python's Flying Circus is broadcast for the first time on BBC Television,^[1] with Terry Gilliam's animations.
October 18 – Caravaggio's Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence (c.1609) is stolen from its frame in the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo, Sicily; it has not been recovered as of 2020.
November 19 – The Apollo 12 lunar module lands on the Moon with astronaut and artist Alan Bean; American artist Forrest "Frosty" Myers claims to have smuggled the art piece Moon Museum onto a leg of the module which will remain on the surface.^[2]
c. December – The music and performance art collective COUM Transmissions is formed in England by Genesis P-Orridge.
Late – Andy Warhol, John Wilcock, and Gerard Malanga co-found the magazine Interview.
Opening of the Oakland Museum of California, designed by Kevin Roche.
Lyrical Abstraction exhibition debuts at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum marking a significant return to expressivity in American abstract painting. For two years the exhibition travels throughout the U.S. including to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

Awards

January 5 – Marilyn Manson, American rock musician and painter
February 7 – Andrew Micallef, Maltese painter and musician^[10]
July 11 – Abigail McLellan, British painter (d. 2009)
October 5 – Chantal Joffe, English painter
November 26 – Kara Walker, African American artist
date unknown
- Boushra Almutawakel, Yemeni photographer^[11]
- Steven Claydon, English sculptor, installation artist and musician
- Invader, French urban artist
- Patricia Martín, Mexican curator

January 20 – Luigi Del Bianco, Italian-born American sculptor (b. 1892)
January 29 – Edward Marshall Boehm, American Expressionist sculptor (b. 1913)
March 14 – Ben Shahn, Lithuanian-born American painter and photographer (b. 1898)
March 17 – Daniel Vázquez Díaz, Spanish painter (b. 1882)
May 11 – T. K. Padmini, Keralan feminist painter (b. 1940; d. in childbirth)
June 12 – Aleksandr Deyneka, Russian painter and sculptor (b. 1899)
July 5 – Walter Gropius, German-born architect (b. 1883)
July 9 – Emerik Feješ, Hungarian and Serbian painter (b. 1904)
July 25 – Otto Dix, German painter and printmaker (b. 1891)
August – Doris Brabham Hatt, English modernist painter (b. 1890)
September 15 – Edith Barry, American sculptor, painter, illustrator and designer (b. 1883)
November 21 – Norman Lindsay, Australian sculptor and cartoonist (born 1879)