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1990 in art
Last updated
July 22, 2025
Contents
Events
Exhibitions
Works
Awards
Films
Deaths
January–June
July–December
See also
References
National Firefighters Memorial by John Williams Mills
Overview of the events of 1990 in art
List of years in art
(
table
)
…
1980
1981
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1983
1984
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v
t
e
Events from the year
1990 in art
.
Events
18 March
–
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft
: Twelve paintings, collectively worth from $100 to $300 million, are stolen from the
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
in
Boston, Massachusetts
by two thieves posing as police officers. This is the largest
art theft
in United States history and the largest-value theft of private property in world history, and the paintings (
as of 2019
[
update
]
) have not been recovered.
6 April
–
Robert Mapplethorpe
's "The Perfect Moment" show of nude and homosexual photographs opens at the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Centre, in spite of accusations of indecency by
Citizens for Community Values
.
15 May
–
Portrait of Doctor Gachet
by
Vincent van Gogh
is sold for a record
$82.5 million
.
East Side Gallery
, 105 paintings by 129 artists from 20 countries, is painted on the east side of the
Berlin Wall
in Germany following its abandonment. It includes
Dmitri Vrubel
's
My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love
and Birgit Kinder's
Test the Best
(renamed
Test the Rest
after restoration).
John Keane
is commissioned by the British
Imperial War Museum
as an official
war artist
in the
Gulf War
.
[
1
]
Exhibitions
British Art Show
at
Hayward Gallery
includes work by
Young British Artists
Jim Gary's Twentieth Century Dinosaurs
opened on April 12, 1990, the only solo exhibition by a sculptor at the
Smithsonian Institution
's
National Museum of Natural History
in Washington, D.C., that drew a record number of visitors to the museum
Works
See also:
Category:1990 sculptures
Arman
-
Hope for Peace Monument
(sculpture in
Yarze
,
Lebanon
)
Eduardo Chillida
-
Peine Del Viento XVII
–
Robert Coburn -
Bell Circles II
(sound installation, Portland, Oregon) –
Elisabeth Frink
-
Desert Quartet
(sculpture,
Worthing
,
England
) –
Douglas Gordon
-
Meaning and Location
Damien Hirst
-
A Thousand Years
Howard Hodgkin
-
After Degas
[
2
]
Tadeusz Kantor
-
September Defeat
Lee Kelly
with Michael Stirling -
Friendship Circle
(installation, Portland, Oregon) –
Eric Larsen -
Packy mural
(Portland, Oregon) –
Patrick Morelli -
Behold
(statue, Atlanta, Georgia) –
Victor Salmones -
Cancer, There Is Hope
(bronze, Houston, Texas)
Shamim Sikder
-
Shoparjito Shadhinota
(En: Self Earned Freedom) at
Dhaka University
in
Dhaka
, Bangladesh
Rachel Whiteread
-
Ghost
[
3
]
Sue Williamson
-
For Thirty Years Next to His Heart
(Forty-nine photocopies in artist-designed frames)
[
4
]
Awards
Turner Prize
– No prize was offered because of lack of sponsorship.
Films
Vincent and Me
Deaths
January–June
January –
Daniel du Janerand
, French painter , sad and devastating death(b.
1919
)
15 January
-
Henrietta Berk
, 81. American painter (b.
1919
)
22 January
–
Roman Vishniac
,
Russian-American
photographer
(b.
1897
)
15 February
–
Norman Parkinson
,
English
fashion photographer (b.
1913
)
16 February
–
Keith Haring
, American artist and social activist (b.
1958
)
15 March
–
Jim Ede
, English art collector (b.
1895
)
21 April
–
Romain de Tirtoff
, Russian-born French
artist
and designer (b.
1892
)
May –
Fuller Potter
, American
Abstract expressionist
artist (b.
1910
)
30 June
–
Jacques Lob
, French
comic book creator
(b.
1932
)
July–December
18 July
–
Yves Chaland
, French
cartoonist
(b.
1957
)
23 July
–
Pierre Gandon
, French illustrator and engraver of
postage stamps
(b.
1899
)
25 July
–
Leonard Bahr
, American portrait and mural
painter
(b.
1905
)
14 October
–
Clifton Pugh
, Australian artist (b.
1924
)
26 October
–
Joan Brown
, American figurative painter (b.
1938
)
7 December
–
Jean Paul Lemieux
, Canadian-American painter (b.
1904
)
8 December
–
Tadeusz Kantor
, Polish painter,
assemblage
artist, set designer and
theatre director
(b.
1915
)
23 December
–
Serge Danot
, French animator (b.
1931
)
28 December
–
Ed van der Elsken
, Dutch photographer (b.
1925
)
29 December
–
David Piper
, English curator and novelist (b.
1918
)
See also
1990 in fine arts of the Soviet Union
References
↑
"John Keane (1954-)"
.
National Portrait Gallery, London
. Retrieved
2012-01-14
.
↑
Hodgkin, Howard (1990),
After Degas
, retrieved
2024-08-20
↑
"Rachel Whiteread"
.
National Gallery of Art
. 16 September 2018.
↑
"Sue Williamson. For Thirty Years Next to His Heart. 1990
|
MoMA"
.
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