Events

16 March - British fashion designer Alexander McQueen shows his first collection, partly inspired by The Silence of the Lambs (film).
12 October – Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid is opened to the public as a gallery for the private art collection of the Thyssen-Bornemisza family.
31 October – Kunsthal in Rotterdam, designed by Rem Koolhaas, is opened as a gallery for modern art.^[1]

Awards

Herbert and Dorothy Vogel collection given to National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.^[5]

6 January – Richard Mortensen, Danish painter and educator (b. 1910)
27 January – Isabel Rawsthorne, English painter and model (b. 1912)^[6]
19 February – Lena Gurr, American painter and lithographer (b. 1897).
4 March – Art Babbitt, American animator (b. 1907).
6 March – Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Portuguese-French abstract painter (b. 1908).
11 April – Alejandro Obregón, Colombian painter, muralist, sculptor and engraver (b. 1920).
28 April – Francis Bacon, Irish-born British figurative painter (b. 1909).
13 May – F. E. McWilliam, Irish sculptor (b. 1909).
6 June – Richard Eurich, English marine painter (b. 1903).
15 June – Brett Whiteley, Australian avant-garde artist (b. 1939).
18 June – Mordecai Ardon, Israeli painter (b. 1896).
28 June – John Piper, English landscape painter and designer (b. 1903).
30 June – André Hébuterne, French painter (b. 1894).
6 July – Richard Eurich, English sea- and landscape painter (b. 1903).