• Opening of the Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki, designed by Steven Holl
• Donatello's bronze Judith and Holofernes is replaced on the Piazza della Signoria in Florence by a replica and moved inside the Palazzo Vecchio.
• David Hockney begins a series of paintings at his seaside home in Malibu, California.^[1]

• July – Freeze, Surrey Docks, London
• September 18 until September 24 - White Room: Bill Albertini at White Columns in New York City.^[2]

• Archibald Prize: Fred Cress – John Beard
• Turner Prize – Tony Cragg

• Artists of Ramingining, Northern Territory, Australia – Aboriginal Memorial
• Francis Bacon – Second Version of Triptych 1944
• Gordon Bennett – Outsider
• Wayne Chabre
  • Gargoyles (Eugene, Oregon)
    • Alan Turing
    • Drosophila Fly Head
  • Grasshopper (sculpture, Salem, Oregon)
• Eldon Garnet – Little Glenn (bronze statue)
• Rachel Joynt – People's Island (brass installation, Dublin)
• Nabil Kanso – Dance of Salome (first series)
• Chris Killip – In Flagrante (photographic book)
• Judith Weinshall Liberman – Holocaust Wall Hangings (first works in series)
• Richard Lippold – Ex Stasis (sculpture)
• Paul Matisse – Kendall Band (sound sculpture)
• David K. Nelson, Jr. – Mirth & Girth
• Louise Nevelson – Sky Landscape (sculpture)
• Éamonn O'Doherty – Anna Livia (bronze installation, Dublin)
• Fred Parhad – Ashurbanipal (bronze, San Francisco)
• Zlatko Pounov and Steven Lowe – Statue of Mahatma Gandhi (San Francisco)
• Paula Rego – The Dance
• Gerhard Richter – Betty
• Susan Dorothea White – The First Supper
• Christopher Wool – Apocalypse Now ("word painting")

• 12 September – Alireza Shojaian, Iranian painter

January to June edit

• 19 January – Cesare Brandi, art critic, historian, and specialist in conservation-restoration theory (b. 1906).
• 31 January – Nedeljko Gvozdenović, a world-renowned Serbian painter (b. 1902).
• 3 February – Ronald Bladen, American sculptor (b. 1918).
• 19 March – Isabel Bishop, American painter and graphic artist (b. 1902).
• 28 March – Neil Williams, American painter (b. 1934).
• 31 March – Georges Lévis, French comic artist (b. 1924).
• 2 April – E. Chambré Hardman, Irish-born British photographer (b. 1898).
• 3 April – Milton Caniff, American cartoonist (b. 1907).
• 17 April
  • Toni Frissell, American photographer (b. 1907]).
  • Louise Nevelson, Ukrainian-born American artist (b. 1900).
• 26 April – Guy Boyd, Australian potter and figurative sculptor (b. 1923)
• 4 May – Stanley Hayter, English-born printmaker (b. 1901).
• 6 May – Constantino Nivola, Italian sculptor (b. 1911)
• 16 May – Charles Keeping, English illustrator, children's book author and lithographer (b. 1924).^[3]
• 16 June – Andrea Pazienza, Italian comics artist (b. 1956).

July to December edit

• 12 July – Julian Trevelyan, English printmaker (b. 1910).
• 24 July – Mira Schendel, Swiss-born Brazilian modernist artist and poet (b. 1919).
• 12 August – Jean-Michel Basquiat, American neo-expressionist painter, suicide (b. 1960).
• 21 August – Ray Eames, American artist and architect (b. 1912).
• 26 September – Marianne Appel, American mural painter and puppet designer (b. 1913).
• 29 September – Charles Addams, American cartoonist (b. 1912).
• 28 October – Pietro Annigoni, Italian painter (b. 1910)^[4]
• 12 November – Primo Conti, Italian Futurist artist (b. 1900).
• 25 November – Alphaeus Philemon Cole, American portrait artist (b. 1876 [sic.])^[5]
• 2 December – Kimon Evan Marengo, Egyptian-born British cartoonist (b. 1904).
• 30 December – Isamu Noguchi, Japanese American artist and landscape architect (b. 1904).^[6]

Date unknown edit

• Reginald George Haggar, English ceramic designer (b. 1905).

• 1988 in Fine Arts of the Soviet Union