2002 in art

Events

• 21 May – Extensions to the Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace, London, designed by John Simpson, are opened.
• 3 July – Decapitation of a statue of Margaret Thatcher: a man decapitates a statue of former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher on display at the Guildhall Art Gallery in the City of London.
• 10 July – At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents is sold for £49.5million to Lord Thomson of Fleet.
• 13 July – Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art opens in the converted Baltic Flour Mill at Gateshead in North East England.
• 29 August – Frida, a biopic starring Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo, receives its world première at the Venice International Film Festival.
• 22 November – Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art opens to the public in Amherst, Massachusetts.
• 14 December – New building for the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas, designed by Tadao Ando, opens to the public.

  Full date unknown

• A sculpture by Henri Matisse, Reclining Nude I , is sold for US$9.2 million, a record for a Matisse sculpture at the time.

  Awards

• Archibald Prize – Cherry Hood, Simon Tedeschi Unplugged
• Beck's Futures – Toby Paterson
• Hugo Boss Prize – Pierre Huyghe
• John Moores Painting Prize - Peter Davies for "Super Star Fucker - Andy Warhol Text Painting"
• Turner Prize – Keith Tyson
• Wynne Prize – Angus Nivision, Remembering Rain

  Works

• Magdalena Abakanowicz – :File:Abakany Cytadela Poznan.jpg|Nierozpoznani
• Banksy – Balloon Girl
• Patricia Cronin – "Memorial to a Marriage" at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York
• Ken Currie – Three Oncologists
• Da Tung and Xi'an Bao Bao
• Gwen Gillen – Mary Tyler Moore
• Anish Kapoor – Marsyas
• Ron Mueck – :File:Mueck-head.jpg|Mask II
• Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen – Cupid's Span
• Moises Cabrera Orozco - Statue of Benito Juárez
• Neo Rauch
• *Hunt
• *Reactionary Situation
• William Wegman – Dog Bowl
• Olbram Zoubek, Jan Kerel and Zdeněk Holzel – "Memorial to the Victims of Communism" in Prague.

  Deaths

January to June

• 30 January – Inge Morath, Austrian photographer
• February – Víctor Grippo, painter, engraver and sculptor, the father of conceptual art in Argentina
• 16 February – Peter Voulkos, American ceramic sculptor
• 12 March – Jean-Paul Riopelle, Canadian painter and sculptor
• 22 May – Niki de Saint Phalle, French sculptor, painter, and film maker.
• 12 June – Bill Blass, American fashion designer.

  July to December

• 8 July – Ward Kimball, American Academy Award-winning animator.
• 13 July – Yousuf Karsh, Armenian-Canadian photographer.
• 17 July – George Rickey, American kinetic sculptor.
• 5 August – Robert Lenkiewicz, English painter.
• 11 August – Galen Rowell, American wilderness photographer, in aviation accident.
• 22 August – Richard Lippold, American sculptor.
• 19 October - Guy Krohg, Norwegian painter.
• 18 November – Bryan Robertson, English curator.
• 23 November – Roberto Matta, Chilean painter.
• 9 December
• *Ian Hornak, American painter and draughtsman.
• *Stan Rice, American poet and artist.
• 26 December – Herb Ritts, American photographer.