1989 in art

Events

• 30 May – Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: The sculpture Goddess of Democracy, constructed by students of the China Central Academy of Fine Arts from extruded polystyrene foam, is unveiled by protestors in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. Early on 4 June it is toppled by a tank.
• 12 June – The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. cancels Robert Mapplethorpe's photography exhibition, "Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment", because of its sexually explicit content.
• October – The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art opens at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, United States.
• December – Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes: Completion of restoration work on Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling in the Vatican.
• Bill Gates founds Corbis Corporation as Interactive Home Systems to license rights to visual media for digital display.
• The Keith Haring Foundation is established.
• Magiciens de la Terre exhibition opens at the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Grande Halle at the Parc de la Villette.
• The Other Story, the first retrospective exhibition of British African, Caribbean, and Asian modernism, opens at the Hayward Gallery in London.

Awards

• Archibald Prize: Bryan Westwood – Portrait of Elwyn Lynn
• John Moores Painting Prize – Lisa Milroy for "Handles"

Exhibitions

• Jim Dine Drawings 1973–1987 at Minneapolis Institute of Art
• Robert Longo retrospective at Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• Magiciens de la terre at Centre Georges Pompidou

Works

• Yaacov Agam – Visual Music Orchestration
• Wayne Chabre
• *Marie Curie Gargoyle
• *Maxwell & Demon Gargoyle
• Robert Coburn – Korean Temple Bell
• Peter Corlett – Man in the mud
• Arturo Di Modica - Charging Bull
• Tom Hardy, Lawrence Halprin, and Scott Stickney – Hatfield Fountain
• John Keane – The Other Cheek
• Odd Nerdrum – Dawn
• Cornelia Parker – Thirty Pieces of Silver
• Joel Shapiro - Untitled
• William Woodward - The Greatest Show on Earth, Circus Museum and the Tibbals Learning Center at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida

Births

• 7 November – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Russian conceptual artist and political activist.

Deaths

January to June

• 23 January – Salvador Dalí, Spanish surrealist artist
• 1 February – Elaine de Kooning, American abstract expressionist painter
• 9 February – Osamu Tezuka, Japanese manga artist, animator and producer
• 17 February – Guy Laroche, French fashion designer
• 24 February – Mallica Reynolds, Jamaican painter, sculptor and religious leader
• 9 March – Robert Mapplethorpe, American photographer
• 31 March – Piotr Belousov, Russian painter and graphic artist
• 6 April – Henri Cadiou, French realist painter and lithographer
• 4 June
• *Dik Browne, American cartoonist
• *Cecil Collins, English painter and printmaker
• 9 June – Piotr Vasiliev, Russian painter

July to December

• 5 July – Berthold Wolpe, German-born British printmaker and typeface designer
• 10 August – Pierre Matisse, gallerist, son of Henri Matisse
• 29 August – Sir Peter Scott, English ornithologist, conservationist and wildlife painter
• 24 October – Doris Huestis Speirs, Canadian painter, ornithologist and poet
• 11 November – Jay DeFeo, American visual artist
• 12 November – Božidar Jakac, Slovene painter and graphic artist
• 21 November – Edward Bawden, English artist and illustrator
• 22 November – C. C. Beck, American cartoonist and comic book artist
• 21 December – Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Nigerian-English photographer, co-founder of Autograph ABP
• 28 December – William Scott, Ulster Scots painter
• 31 December – Lilly Daché, French milliner and fashion designer date unknown
• * Francesco Di Cocco, Italian painter