• 27 June – Stitching the Standard by Edmund Leighton is sold at Sotheby's in Belgravia to a private collector.^[1]

• Archibald Prize: Brett Whiteley – Art, Life and the other thing
• John Moores Painting Prize - Noel Forster for "A painting in six stages with a silk triangle"^[2]

• Alicia Austin – Alicia Austin's Age of Dreams
• Zdzisław Beksiński – AA78
• Christo and Jeanne Claude - "Wrapped Walk Ways" in Loose Park in Kansas City, Missouri^[3]
• Dan Flavin – untitled (to the real Dan Hill)
• Helen Frankenthaler – Cleveland Symphony Orchestra
• David Gentleman – "Eleanor cross" mural for Charing Cross tube station (London)
• Jack Goldstein – The Jump
• Michael Heizer – Isolated Mass/Circumflex (Number 2) (land art, Houston, Texas)
• Bryan Hunt – Big Twist (bronze, Houston, Texas)
• Nabil Kanso – Hiroshima Nagasaki One-Minute
• Liz Leyh – Concrete Cows (Milton Keynes)
• Odd Nerdrum – The Murder of Andreas Baader
• Dennis Oppenheim – Cobalt Vectors – An Invasion
• Mikhail Savitsky – Partisan Madonna of Minsk

• 19 September – Russell Ouellett, American artist and therapist.

• 1 January – Don Freeman, American author, painter and illustrator (b. 1908)
• 10 January – Gluck, born Hannah Gluckstein, English painter (b. 1895)
• 19 January – Živko Stojsavljević, Serbian painter (b. 1900).
• 24 February – Alma Thomas, African American abstract expressionist painter (b. 1891).
• 13 April – Jack Chambers, Canadian artist and filmmaker (b. 1931).
• 8 May – Duncan Grant, Scottish painter (b. 1885).
• 31 May – Hannah Höch, German Dada photomontage artist (b. 1889).
• 13 July
  • Thomas B. Hess, American art editor, writer, and curator (b. 1920)
  • Oliver Messel, English-born stage designer (b. 1904).
• 5 August – Victor Hasselblad, Swedish inventor and photographer (b. 1889).
• 14 August – Nicolas Bentley, British author and illustrator (b. 1907).
• 27 August – Gordon Matta-Clark, American artist (b. 1943).
• 6 November – Harry Bertoia, Italian-born American artist and designer (b. 1915).
• 8 November – Norman Rockwell, American painter and illustrator (b. 1894).
• 20 November – Giorgio de Chirico, Greek-Italian painter (b. 1888).
• 30 November - Otto Kallir, Austrian -American art historian, author, publisher, and gallerist (b. 1894).

Full date unknown edit

• Gabriel Hayes, Irish sculptor and coin designer (b.1909).
• Leo Michelson, Latvian-American painter and sculptor (b.1887).

• 1978 in fine arts of the Soviet Union