• 14 April – In the Netherlands, thieves steal 20 paintings worth $500 million from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Less than an hour later they are found in an abandoned car near the museum.^[1]
• 25 May – Opening of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin.
• 9 July – The Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London, designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott, is opened.^[2]
• September – Opening of the Weserburg modern art museum in Bremen (Germany) as the Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen.

• The Prince of Wales (now Charles III) - Watercolours.
• Eric Hebborn, Drawn to Trouble^[3]

• February 6 until May 6 - Albert Bierstadt, Art & Enterprise at the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York.^[4]
• December 13 until February 2, 1992 - Damien Hirst solo exhibition at Institute of Contemporary Arts.^[5]

• May – First performance of Candoco Dance Company

• John Moores Painting Prize - Andrzej Jackowski for "The Beekeeper's son"^[6]
• Turner Prize – Anish Kapoor

• Las niñas en la alborada – Félix Aráuz
• "The Umbrellas" (simultaneous sculptural instillations in California, U.S.A and Japan) - Christo and Jeanne Claude
• Chain Reaction (sculpture, Santa Monica, California) – Paul Conrad
• Field (multiple figure sculptures in terracotta - first version) – Antony Gormley
• Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purposes of Understanding – Damien Hirst
• The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living – Damien Hirst
• Capitalism (sculpture in Portland, Oregon) – Larry Kirkland
• Guardians of the Gate (bronze, San Francisco) – Miles Metzger
• Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (installation) – Cornelia Parker
• Tompkins Square Crawl (performance) - William Pope.L^[7]
• Self (sculpted self-portrait head in artist's blood - first version) – Marc Quinn
• Host Analog (sculpture, Portland, Oregon) – Buster Simpson
• Cascade Charley (fountain, Eugene, Oregon) – Alice Wingwall

• Hannah Levy, American sculptor^[8]
• Probable date – Cartяain, English graffiti urban artist.^[9]

January to June edit

• 3 January – Doris Zinkeisen, British theatrical designer and commercial artist (b. 1898).
• 11 January – Charles Mozley, British artist and art teacher (b. 1914)^[10]
• 7 February – Jean-Paul Mousseau, Canadian artist (b. 1927).
• 13 February – Arno Breker, German sculptor (b. 1900).
• 15 March – Vladimir Seleznev, Russian painter (b. 1928).
• 29 March – Guy Bourdin, French photographer (b. 1928).
• 10 June – Jean Bruller, French writer and illustrator (b. 1902).

July to December edit

• 16 July – Robert Motherwell, American abstract expressionist painter and printmaker (b. 1915).
• 3 August – Boris Ugarov, Russian painter, a last President of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (b. 1922).
• 30 August – Jean Tinguely, Swiss painter and sculptor (b. 1925).
• 5 September
  • Alexander Pushnin, Russian painter and art educator (b. 1921).
  • Princess Fahrelnissa Zeid, Turkish abstract artist (b. 1901).
• 14 September – Russell Lynes, American art historian, photographer and author (b. 1910).
• 18 September - Leland Bell, American painter (b. 1922).
• 24 September – Dr. Seuss, American illustrator (b. 1904).
• 8 October – David Budd, American abstract painter (b. 1927)
• 27 October – Pyke Koch, Dutch painter (b. 1901).
• 7 November – Tom of Finland, Finnish fetish artist (b. 1920).
• 11 November – Nadezhda Shteinmiller, Russian painter and theater artist (b. 1915).
• 18 November – Reg Parlett, English comics artist (b. 1904).
• 21 November – Joseph Delaney, American painter (b. 1904).
• 8 December - Bernice Abbott, American photographer (b. 1898).
• 9 December – Gisèle Lestrange, French graphic artist (b. 1927).
• 10 December – Greta Kempton, Austrian-American artist (b. 1901).
• 12 December - Moshe Castel, Israeli painter (b. 1909).

• 1991 in Fine Arts of the Soviet Union