1998 in art

Events

• April – Fans of Newcastle United F.C. decorate the newly erected Angel of the North sculpture with a giant replica of Alan Shearer's no. 9 shirt. Police remove the shirt after about twenty minutes.
• 3 December – 44 governments participating in the approve the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, requiring efforts to be made to restore looted art to its original owners or their heirs.
• Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, designed by Heinz Hilmer and Christoph Sattler, opens.

Exhibitions

• 1 November – Jackson Pollock retrospective opens at MoMA.

Awards

• Archibald Prize – Lewis Miller, Portrait of Allan Mitelman No 3
• Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester Artist of the Year – Wendell Castle
• Gran Prix d'Antoine Pevsner – Constantine Andreou
• Hugo Boss Prize – Douglas Gordon
• Turner Prize – Chris Ofili

Works

• Mark Calderon – Floribunda
• Alan Collins – Legacy of Leadership
• Michael Condron – Martian tripod
• Martin Creed – Work No 200: Half the air in a given space
• Anthony Gormley – Angel of the North
• David Hockney – A Bigger Grand Canyon
• Alexander McQueen – Joan
• Mary Miss – Framing Union Square in the 14th Street–Union Square station in New York City
• Ron Mueck – Ghost
• Chris Ofili – No Woman No Cry
• Valerie Otani – Folly Bollards
• Stephen Robin – Federal Triangle Flowers
• Edwina Sandys - Eve's Apple permanently installed in Windsor, Ontario
• Piotr Uklański – The Nazis
• Rachel Whiteread – ''Water Tower''

Publications

• A hoax biography, launched on 1 April.

Deaths

• 23 January – Victor Pasmore, English artist and architect
• 29 January - Karin Jonzen, British sculptor
• 7 March – Karen Holtsmark, Norwegian painter
• 12 March – Beatrice Wood, American artist and ceramicist
• 13 March – Bill Reid, Canadian artist
• 3 April – Wolf Vostell, German painter and sculptor
• 7 April – James McIntosh Patrick, Scottish landscape painter
• 25 April – Wright Morris, American novelist, photographer, and essayist
• 3 May – Otto Bettmann, German American image archivist
• 6 May – Sybil Connolly, Welsh-Irish fashion designer
• 18 May – Enid Marx, English textile designer
• June – Kali, Polish-American portrait painter and Polish Resistance agent during World War II
• 8 October – Zhang Chongren, Chinese artist and sculptor
• 25 October – Dick Higgins, English composer, poet, printer and early Fluxus artist
• 3 November – Bob Kane, American comic book artist and writer
• 13 November – Claude Serre, French cartoonist
• 2 December – Brian Stonehouse, English painter and Special Operations Executive agent during World War II
• 30 December – Joan Brossa, Catalan poet, playwright, graphic designer and plastic artist