• April – A Belgian activist group cuts off the left hand of a bronze Congolese figure in a monument to Leopold II of Belgium in Ostend as a protest against colonial atrocities.^[1]
• 24 May – A fire in the Momart storage warehouse destroys major works by Helen Chadwick, Tracey Emin, Patrick Heron, Damien Hirst and other British artists.
• 18 July – The subterranean Chichu Art Museum on the Japanese island of Naoshima, designed by Tadao Ando, opens.
• 11 December – İstanbul Modern (art museum) is established in Turkey. The country's first modern art museum, the Doğançay Museum, opened earlier in the year, also in Istanbul; it is dedicated to the artistic legacy of Burhan Doğançay.

• David Backhouse – Animals in War Memorial (London)
• Banksy
  • Di-faced Tenner (multiple copies)
  • Kissing Coppers (stencil graffiti originally in Brighton)
• Bruce Beasley – Encounter (sculpture, Eugene, Oregon)
• Lucian Freud – The Brigadier (portrait of Andrew Parker Bowles)^[2][3]
• Rachel Joynt – Noah's Egg (sculpture at Veterinary Sciences Centre, University College Dublin in Ireland)
• Liz Magor – LightShed (installation, Vancouver)
• Cornelia Parker – Perpetual Canon (installation)
• Paula Rego – The Cake Woman
• Donald Wilson – Holon (sculpture, Portland, Oregon)
• Statue of Mahatma Gandhi (Houston, Texas)
• Artworks at Millennium Park in Chicago, United States:
  • Anish Kapoor – Cloud Gate
  • Jaume Plensa – Crown Fountain^[4][5][6]

• Archibald Prize – Craig Ruddy, David Gulpilil, two worlds
• Artes Mundi Prize – Xu Bing
• Beck's Futures – Saskia Olde Wolbers
• Hugo Boss Prize – Rirkrit Tiravanija
• Caldecott Medal for children's book illustration – Mordicai Gerstein, The Man Who Walked Between the Towers
• En Foco's New Works Photography Award – Manuel Rivera-Ortiz
• John Moores Painting Prize – Alexis Harding, Slump/Fear (orange/black)^[7]
• Wynne prize – George Tjungurrayi, Untitled

• Edward Delaney retrospective at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin
• Drawings of Jim Dine at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
• Erich Heckel – His Work in the 1920s at the Brücke Museum, Berlin
• Paul Henry at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
• Edward Hopper at the Tate Gallery, London

• Modigliani

January to March edit

• 4 January – Jeff Nuttall, English poet, publisher, actor, painter and sculptor (b.1933)
• 9 January – Nissim Ezekiel, Indian poet, playwright and art critic (b.1924)
• 3 February - Ward Jackson, American painter (b. 1928)
• 7 February – Norman Thelwell, English cartoonist (b.1923)
• 4 March – Stephen Sprouse, American fashion designer and artist (b.1953)
• 12 March – Milton Resnick, American painter (b.1917)
• 13 March – René Laloux, French animator and film director (b.1929)

April to June edit

• 1 April – Enrique Grau, Colombian painter and sculptor (b.1920)
• 7 April – Wolfgang Mattheuer, German painter and sculptor (b.1927)
• 13 April – Muriel Berman, American art collector and philanthropist, co-founder of the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania
• 25 April – Jacques Rouxel, French animator (b.1931)
• 12 May – Syd Hoff, American children’s book author and cartoonist (b.1912)
• 28 May – Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, French photographer (b.1921)
• 5 June – Fiore de Henriquez, Italian-born British sculptor (b.1921)
• 11 June – Egon von Fürstenberg, Swiss fashion designer (b.1946)
• 15 June – Lothar Fischer, German sculptor (b.1933)

July to September edit

• 2 July – John Cullen Murphy, American comics artist (b.1919)
• 19 July – Sylvia Daoust, Canadian sculptor (b.1902)
• 3 August – Henri Cartier-Bresson, French photographer (b.1908)
• 4 August – Cécile Guillame, first woman to engrave a French postal stamps (b.1933).
• 8 August – Leon Golub, American painter (b.1922).
• 9 August – Liisi Beckmann, Finnish artist and designer (b.1924).
• 8 September – Frank Thomas, American animator (b.1912)
• 19 September – Eddie Adams, American Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer (b.1933)

October to December edit

• 1 October – Richard Avedon, American photographer (b.1923).
• 13 October – Ivor Wood, English stop-motion animator (b.1932).
• 15 October – Irv Novick, American comic book artist (b.1916).
• 13 November – Harry Lampert, American cartoonist, advertising artist and author (b.1916).
• 19 November
  • Trina Schart Hyman, American illustrator of children's books (b.1939).
  • Piet Esser, Dutch sculptor (b.1914).
• 22 November – Leo Dee, American silverpoint artist (b.1931).
• 25 November – Ed Paschke, Polish-American painter (b.1939).
• 9 December – Sergey Voychenko, Belarusian artist and designer (b.1955).
• 16 December – Agnes Martin, Canadian-American painter (b.1912).
• 17 December – Tom Wesselmann, American pop artist (b.1931).
• December – Cleve Gray, American Abstract expressionist painter (b.1918).

• List of years in art