1977 in art

Events from the year 1977 in art.

Events

 * April 19 – Yale Center for British Art gallery, designed by Louis Kahn (died 1974), opens to the public in New Haven, Connecticut, United States.
 * May 8–24 – Suzanne Lacy's extended performance piece about rape, Three Weeks in May takes place in Los Angeles.
 * September 12 – American poet Robert Lowell dies having suffered a heart attack in the back of a cab in New York City while returning to his ex-wife Elizabeth Hardwick carrying a portrait of his current wife Lady Caroline Blackwood by her first husband Lucian Freud.
 * Starr Kempf constructs the first of his "wind sculptures".
 * documenta 6 takes place.
 * Douglas Crimp curates "Pictures," featuring Jack Goldstein, Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine and others, at Artists Space in New York.
 * Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in Iran, designed by Kamran Diba, is inaugurated.

Awards

 * Archibald Prize: Kevin Connor – Robert Klippel

Exhibitions

 * Retrospective of Valentine Hugo at the Centre Culturel Thibaud de Champagne, Troyes.
 * Retrospective of Frida Kahlo at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City.

Works

 * Marina Abramović and Ulay – Expansion in Space
 * Walter De Maria – The Lightning Field (land art)
 * Audrey Flack - Marilyn (Vanitas)
 * Lucian Freud – Naked Man with Rat
 * Tina Girouard - "Pinwheel" (performance instillation at the New Orleans Museum of Art)
 * Gilbert & George – Series of Red Morning works
 * David Hockney – My Parents
 * Donald Judd – Untitled (Meter Box)
 * Nabil Kanso – The Vortices of Wrath (Lebanon 1977)
 * Jacob Lawrence – Self-portrait
 * Jacques Lipchitz – Bellerophon Taming Pegasus (sculpture, New York City)
 * Kathleen McCullough – Cat in Repose (sculpture, Portland, Oregon)
 * Gordon Matta-Clark – Jacob's Ladder
 * Ivan Meštrović – Martin Kukučín (sculptures)
 * Robert Morris – Williams Mirrors
 * Maria Prymachenko - Two-Headed Chicken
 * David Shepherd – Tiger in the Sun
 * Cindy Sherman – Untitled Film Stills (through 1980)
 * C. Talacca – Bust of Simón Bolívar (bronze, Houston, Texas)
 * Jean Tinguely – Tinguely Fountain and Carnival Fountain (Fasnachtsbrunnen) (both kinetic sculptures in Basel)
 * Don Wilson – Interlocking Forms (sculpture, Portland, Oregon)
 * Felix de Weldon – Statue of Ty Cobb (bronze, Royston, Georgia)
 * Audrey Flack - World War II (Vanitas)

Births

 * 8 February – Yucef Merhi, Venezuelan artist, poet and computer programmer.
 * 16 April – Florentijn Hofman, Dutch installation artist.
 * 14 May – Emeka Ogboh, Nigerian sound and installation artist.
 * 5 October – Hugleikur Dagsson, Icelandic cartoonist
 * Michael Dean, English sculptor.
 * Gregory Halpern, American photographer.

Deaths

 * 27 April – Charles Alston, American artist, muralist, and teacher (b. 1907).
 * 27 June – Ivan Tabaković, Serbian painter (b. 1898)
 * 3 July – Gertrude Abercrombie, American painter (b. 1909).
 * 21 July – Lee Miller, American photographer (b. 1907).
 * 23 August – Naum Gabo, Russian sculptor (b. 1890).
 * 3 September – Gianni Vella, Maltese painter and cartoonist (b. 1885)
 * 11 September – Augustus Dunbier, American painter (b. 1888).
 * 23 September – John Nash, English painter, illustrator, and engraver (b. 1893).
 * 25 September – William McMillan, Scottish sculptor (b. 1887) (victim of assault).
 * 20 October – Marie-Thérèse Walter, mistress of Pablo Picasso (b. 1909).
 * 4 November – Keith Vaughan, English painter (b. 1912) (suicide).
 * 5 November – René Goscinny, French comic book author, editor and humorist (b. 1926).
 * 21 December – Seán Keating, Irish romantic-realist painter (b. 1889).

Full date unknown

 * Philip Lindsey Clark, English sculptor (b. 1889)
 * Pan Yuliang, Chinese-born painter (b. 1899)
 * Walter Pritchard, Scottish stained glass artist, muralist and sculptor (b. 1905)