Events
- February - Paul Gauguin's painting When Will You Marry? sells for $300m (£197m), reportedly to Qatar Museums, the highest known price ever paid for any work of art
- April - The accused rapist in the Emma Sulkowicz case which inspired the art piece "Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight)" files suit in United States Federal Court in Manhattan against Columbia University, its art department chairman Jon Kessler, and the University president Lee C. Bollinger, saying through his attorneys, that he is the victim of gender discrimination and a "witch hunt". [1]
- April 2 - Sir Peter Blake's temporary artwork Everybody Razzle Dazzle, Mersey Ferry MV Snowdrop painted in a variation of dazzle camouflage, enters service on the River Mersey in England. [2]
- April 13 - A South African man is charged with vandalising a Johannesburg statue of Mahatma Gandhi by attempting to paint it white. [3]
- May 1 - The new Whitney Museum of American Art facility in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, designed by Renzo Piano, opens. [4]
Whitney Museum, New York - May 11 - One canvas, "Version O", the final painting from a series of fifteen paintings and numerous drawings entitled Les Femmes d'Alger by Pablo Picasso created after the death of his friend and contemporary Henri Matisse sells for $179.4 million U.S (with fees) at Christie's in New York City thus establishing a new record for the highest price ever paid at auction for a work of art. [5] At the same sale "Pointing Man", a work by the Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti sells for $141.3 million U.S., making it the highest price ever paid for a sculpture at auction. [6] [7]
- August 21 - Street artist Banksy opens Dismaland, a temporary art project in the seaside resort town of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, England. [8]
- September - Rembrandt's early painting Unconscious Patient (Allegory of Smell) (from The Senses series, 1624-5) emerges at an auction in New Jersey and is purchased for the Leiden Collection in New York City.
- September 20 - The Broad contemporary art museum in Downtown Los Angeles, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, opens.
- October 2 - La Artcore Gallery in Los Angeles, US, presents "Excessivist Initiative", an exhibition that marks the beginning of the Excessivism movement in art. [9]
- October 8 - Newport Street Gallery in South London, a conversion of 1913 theatrical workshops into a free public art gallery for Damien Hirst by Caruso St John architects opens. [10]
- November 10 - The Brigadier by Lucian Freud, a portrait of Andrew Parker Bowles in his British Army uniform sells for $34.89 million US at Christie's in New York City. [11]
- December 6 - A woman at the Art Basel Miami Beach art fair stabs another in plain sight of art goers and the incident is at first ignored as people think that it is a work of performance art. [12]
