1977 in art

Events

• April 19 – Yale Center for British Art gallery, designed by Louis Kahn, 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
• Lucian Freud – Naked Man with Rat
• Tina Girouard - "Pinwheel"
• Gilbert & George – Series of Red Morning works
• David Hockney –
• Donald Judd – Untitled
• Nabil Kanso – The Vortices of Wrath
• Jacob Lawrence – :File:Lawrence Jacob Self-Portrait 1977.jpg|Self-portrait
• Jacques Lipchitz – Bellerophon Taming Pegasus
• Kathleen McCullough – Cat in Repose
• Gordon Matta-Clark – Jacob's Ladder
• Ivan Meštrović – Martin Kukučín
• Robert Morris – Williams Mirrors
• David Shepherd – Tiger in the Sun
• Cindy Sherman – Untitled Film Stills
• C. Talacca – Statue of Simón Bolívar
• Jean Tinguely – Tinguely Fountain and Carnival Fountain
• Don Wilson – Interlocking Forms
• Audrey Flack - World War II

  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.
• 16 December – Kevin Gillespie, American comic book creator and graphic artist.
• Michael Dean, English sculptor.
• Gregory Halpern, American photographer.

  Deaths

• 27 April – Charles Alston, American artist, muralist, and teacher.
• 27 June – Ivan Tabaković, Serbian painter
• 3 July – Gertrude Abercrombie, American painter.
• 21 July – Lee Miller, American photographer.
• 23 August – Naum Gabo, Russian sculptor.
• 3 September – Gianni Vella, Maltese painter and cartoonist
• 11 September – Augustus Dunbier, American painter.
• 23 September – John Nash, English painter, illustrator, and engraver.
• 20 October – Marie-Thérèse Walter, mistress of Pablo Picasso.
• 4 November – Keith Vaughan, English painter .
• 5 November – René Goscinny, French comic book author, editor and humorist.
• 21 December – Seán Keating, Irish romantic-realist painter.

  Full date unknown

• Philip Lindsey Clark, English sculptor
• Pan Yuliang, Chinese-born painter
• Walter Pritchard, Scottish stained glass artist, muralist and sculptor