• 21 May – Eighteen Old Master paintings from the Beit collection are stolen from Russborough House in Ireland by Martin "The General" Cahill, the second major art theft from this location.
• 19 August – Two weeks after it was stolen, the Picasso painting Weeping Woman is found in a locker at Spencer Street station in Melbourne, Australia.
• Opening of the Musée d'Orsay (formerly the Gare d'Orsay) in Paris.

• Archibald Prize – Davida Allen, Dr John Arthur McKelvey Shera
• Sulman Prize – Wendy Sharpe, Black Sun – Morning and Night
• Turner Prize – Gilbert and George
  • Shortlisted: Art & Language, Victor Burgin, Derek Jarman, Stephen McKenna and Bill Woodrow

• 23 November – The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890–1985 opens at Los Angeles County Museum of Art.^[1][2] Organized by Maurice Tuchman, this is the first public showing of the abstract art of Swedish painter and mystic Hilma af Klint (died 1944).

• David Adickes – Cornet (sculpture, Galveston, Texas)
• Yaacov Agam - Fire and Water Fountain at Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv, Israel (Dedicated)
• Ruth Asawa – Aurora (sculpture, San Francisco)
• John Buckley – The Headington Shark (Untitled 1986; painted fibreglass sculpture)
• Daniel Buren - Les Deux Plateaux in the inner courtyard (Cour d'Honneur) of the Palais Royal in Paris, France
• John Burgee and Philip Johnson – Clarke Memorial Fountain (Notre Dame, Indiana)
• Wayne Chabre – Einstein Gargoyle (sculpture, Eugene, Oregon)
• John Doubleday – Royal Marines Commando Memorial (Lympstone, England)
• Georgia Gerber – Animals in Pools (sculptures, Portland, Oregon)
• Robert Graham - Monument to Joe Louis installed at Hart Plaza in Detroit, Michigan, United  States
• David Hockney – Pearblossom Highway #2 (photocollage)
• Ellsworth Kelly – Houston Triptych (bronze sculpture, Houston, Texas)
• Igor Mitoraj – Heros de Lumiere
• Odd Nerdrum – Return of the Sun
• Kantilal B. Patel – Mohandas Gandhi (sculpture, New York City)
• Andy Warhol
  • Camouflage
  • Map of Eastern U.S.S.R. Missile Bases
  • The Last Supper (Series completed )
• Andrew Wyeth – Flood Plain
• Jamie Wyeth – Kalounna in Frogtown (Terra Foundation for American Art)
• Yu Tang Wang and Sun Chau – Chinatown Gateway (structure, Portland, Oregon)

• 15 April – Amy Louise Nettleton, British installation and sculpture artist.
• Oscar Murillo, Colombian-born artist.

January to June edit

• 6 March – Georgia O'Keeffe American artist (b. 1887).
• 26 April – Dechko Uzunov, Bulgarian painter (b. 1899).
• 11 May – Henry Plumer McIlhenny, American art collector, philanthropist and chairman of Philadelphia Museum of Art (b. 1910).
• 31 May – Jane Frank, American painter, sculptor, mixed media artist and textile artist (b. 1918).
• 9 June – Ilona Harima, Finnish painter (b. 1911).

July to December edit

• 7 April – Cecil King, Irish abstract-minimalist painter (b. 1921).
• 30 June – Guan Zilan, Chinese avant-garde painter (b. 1903)
• 22 July – Floyd Gottfredson, American cartoonist (b. 1905).
• 31 August – Henry Moore, English artist and sculptor (b. 1898).
• 9 September – Albert Malet, French painter (b. 1912).
• 12 September
  • Ernst Haas, Austrian photographer (b. 1921).
  • Jacques Henri Lartigue, French photographer and painter (b. 1894).
• 18 September – Corita Kent, American nun and silkscreen printer (b. 1918).
• 11 October – Barker Fairley, English-born Canadian painter, writer, and educator (b. 1887).
• 23 October – Conrad O'Brien-ffrench, British intelligence officer, mountaineer and painter (b.1893).

Undated edit

• Marko Čelebonović, Serbian painter (b. 1902).
• Guan Liang, Chinese artist (b. 1900).

• 1986 in fine arts of the Soviet Union