1990 in art

Events

• 18 March – Twelve paintings, collectively worth from $100 to $300 million, are stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts by 2 thieves posing as police officers. This is the largest art theft in US history, and the paintings (as of 2007^[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.
• John Keane commissioned by the British Imperial War Museum as an official war artist in the Gulf War.^[1]

Awards

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Exhibitions

• British Art Show at Hayward Gallery includes work by Young British Artists

Works

• Peine Del Viento XVII – Eduardo Chillida
• Desert Quartet – Elisabeth Frink (Worthing, England)
• Meaning and Location – Douglas Gordon
• A Thousand Years – Damien Hirst
• September Defeat – Tadeusz Kantor
• Ghost – Rachel Whiteread

Deaths

January to June

• 22 January – Roman Vishniac, Russian-American photographer (b. 1897).
• 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).
• 30 June – Jacques Lob, French comic book creator (b. 1932).

July to 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).
• 8 December – Tadeusz Kantor, Polish painter, assemblage artist, set designer and theatre director (b. 1915).
• 23 December – Serge Danot, French animator (b. 1931).

Full date unknown

• Daniel du Janerand, French painter (b. 1919).
• Fuller Potter, American Abstract expressionist artist (b. 1910).

See also

• 1990 in fine arts of the Soviet Union

References