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) 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.
British Art Show at Hayward Gallery includes work by Young British Artists
Peine Del Viento XVII – Eduardo Chillida
Bell Circles II (sound installation, Portland, Oregon) – Robert Coburn
Desert Quartet (sculpture, Worthing, England) – Elisabeth Frink
Meaning and Location – Douglas Gordon
A Thousand Years – Damien Hirst
September Defeat – Tadeusz Kantor
Friendship Circle (installation, Portland, Oregon) – Lee Kelly with Michael Stirling
Packy mural (Portland, Oregon) – Eric Larsen
Cancer, There Is Hope (bronze, Houston, Texas) – Victor Salmones
Ghost – Rachel Whiteread
Turner Prize - No prize was offered because of lack of sponsorship.
January – Daniel du Janerand, French 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)
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)
1990 in art Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA
