2012 in art

The year 2012 in art involved various significant events.

Events

January – Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum extension in Boston, Massachusetts, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, is opened
February – Extension to Städel art gallery in Frankfurt, Germany, designed by schneider+schumacher, scheduled for opening
March – The Palm Springs Art Museum opens a satellite museum in Palm Desert
March – The Jerwood Gallery in Hastings opens
March – A large trove of art is discovered in Munich, part of which was looted by the Nazis. German authorities only acknowledge the discovery after press reports in November 2013
March 29 – Refurbished and renamed Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, with new Mordant Wing designed by Sam Marshall, opened
May 1 – One of four versions of The Scream by Edvard Munch sells at Sotheby's in New York City for $119.9 million including the buyer's commission, the most ever paid for a work of art at auction
May 10 – God Speed by Edmund Leighton is sold to a private collector through Sotheby's in London
May 11 – ArcelorMittal Orbit sculpture and observation tower in Olympic Park, London, designed by Anish Kapoor with Cecil Balmond and Ushida Findlay Architects, unveiled
May 29 – Tate Britain announces that it has received a donation of nine works of art dating from the 1960s–90s from the private collection of Mercedes and Ian Stoutzker
July 17 - Odalisque in Red Pants by Henri Matisse which was stolen off the wall at the Contemporary Art Museum of Caracas in the capital city of Venezuela and replaced with a forgery inside of its former frame is recovered in an FBI sting operation in Miami, Florida.
July 18 – Tate Modern, London, opens The Tanks performance art/installation space, refurbished by Herzog & de Meuron
July 27
* 08:12 – Martin Creed's Work No 1197: All the bells in a country rung as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes is performed across the United Kingdom to mark the opening of the 2012 Summer Olympics
* 21:00 – Performance of Isles of Wonder, the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London directed by Danny Boyle, begins
August 12 – Damien Hirst's representation of the British Union Flag forms the arena centrepiece for the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony in London. Es Devlin is designer for the ceremony and the creative director and choreographer is Kim Gavin
September - The Museo Alameda in San Antonio, Texas, U.S.A. closes
September 21 – Islamic art gallery at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, designed by Mario Bellini and Rudy Ricciotti, opens
September 23 – Renovation and new wing for Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, designed by Benthem Crouwel Architekten, opened to public
September 27 – The "Isleworth Mona Lisa" is unveiled to the public for the first time in 40 years
October 1 – China [Art Museum, Shanghai|China Art Museum] and the Power Station of Art open in the former China pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai to house exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art
October 29 – Hurricane Sandy hits New York City and causes extreme damage to buildings, basements, art galleries and artist studios.
November – The auction house Sotheby's removes Cady Noland's piece Cowboys Milking from their contemporary sale after the artist "disavows" the work. Both Noland and the auction house are then sued by the piece's owner, gallerist Marc Jancou for twenty six million dollars but a judge dismisses Jancou's lawsuit
December 11 – Le Louvre-Lens, a branch museum of the Musée du Louvre, designed by SANAA, opens in the French city of Lens, Pas-de-Calais, a former centre of coal mining

Exhibitions

To January 9 – "de Kooning: A Retrospective" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York
To February 5 – "Leonardo da Vinci, Painter at the Court of Milan" at the National Gallery, London
To February 12 – "Johann Zoffany RA: Society Observed" at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut
January 21 until April 9 – "David Hockney: A Bigger Picture" at the Royal Academy, London
January 27 until May 13 - No Lone Zone at the Tate Modern in London, UK.
February 1 until May 6 – "Van Gogh Up Close" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
February 9 until May 27 – "Lucian Freud Portraits" at the National Portrait Gallery, London
February 11 until April 1 "Three From Cuba: The Art of Vicente, Miguel and Sandro - The Fantastic to the Sublime" at the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala, Florida.
February 15 until May 27 - "Van Dyck in Sicily" at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in Dulwich, South London, England.
February 15 until July 15 – "Picasso & Modern British Art" at Tate Britain, London
February 18 until October 28 - Manet in Black at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.
March 13 until July 1 – "Degas et le Nu" at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris
March 14 until June 5 – "Turner Inspired in the Light of Claude" at the National Gallery, London
From March 15 – "Rodin to Now: Modern Sculpture" at the Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Desert
April 4 until July 20 - "The Ideal City: The Renaissance Utopia at Urbino between Piero della Francesca and Raphael” at the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino, Italy
April 4 until September 9 – "Damien Hirst" at Tate Modern, London
From April 7 until July 29 - "Fracture: Daido Moriyama" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, curated by Edward Robinson.
From May 25 until September 2 - "Maxfield Parrish: The Retrospective at The National Museum of American Illustration in Newport, Rhode Island.
From June 9 until September 2 – Picturing the South, photographs by Martin Parr, Kael Alford, and Shane Lavalette
From June 28 until October 14 – "Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye" at Tate Modern, London
From August 18 – "India: Art Now" at the Arken [Museum of Modern Art], Copenhagen
From September 9 – "Arte Povera: The Great Awakening" at the Kunstmuseum Basel
From September 12 – "Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde" at Tate Britain, London
From September 15 until December 9 – "Bronze" at the Royal Academy, London
From September 16 – "Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
From September 18 – "Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
From September 20 until November 18 – "Discovering Columbus" by Tatzu Nishi at Columbus Circle in New York City, New York
From September 28 – "Paul Gauguin: The Prints" at the Kunsthaus Zürich
From October 5 – "Picasso Black and White" at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
From October 7 until January 13, 2013- "Franz Kline: Coal abd Dteel" at the Allentown Art Museum in Allentown, Pennsylvania
From October 10 – "Richard Hamilton: The Late Works" at the National Gallery, London
From October 13 – "Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present" at the National Gallery, London
From November 15 – "George Bellows" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
From November 18 – "Tokyo 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde" at the Museum of Modern Art New York City, New York
From December 4 – "Matisse: In Search of True Painting" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Works

El Anatsui – "Broken Bridge ll" along the High Line on the western wall between west 21st street and west 22nd street in Manhattan, New York City.
David Kimball Anderson - "Hydrogen snd Nitrogen"
Julius von Bismarck and Julian Charrière - "Some Pigeons are more Equal than Others" executed at the Venice Biennale of Architecture and then in Copenhagen
Monica Bonvicini – Run
David Breuer-Weil – Alien
Berlinde De Bruyckere - "We are All Flesh"
Carlos Cruz-Diez – "Double Induction in a Chromatic Frequency" mosaic tiled walkways at Marlins Park in Miami, Florida
Anya Gallaccio – The Light Pours Out of Me
Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo – Inversion: Plus Minus
Ralph Heimans – Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II
Damien Hirst – Verity
Celia Paul – Painter and Model
John Howard Sanden – Laura Welch Bush
Jud Turner – Great Blue Heron
Danh Vo - I M U U R 2'x
Henry Weber - Statue of Tony DeMarco in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts

Awards

Archibald Prize - Tim Storrier for The Histrionic Wayfarer (after Bosch)
Artes Mundi Prize - Teresa Margolles
Henry Hope Reed Award for classical art and design – Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
Hugo Boss Prize – Danh Vo
John Moores Painting Prize - Sarah Pickstone for "Stevie Smith and the Willow"

Films

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
Girl With Black Balloons
''Mark Lombardi - Death-Defying Acts of Art and Conspiracy''

Deaths

January 1
* Jan Groover, 68, American photographer
* Hermann Guggiari, 87, Paraguayan sculptor
January 3 – Winifred Milius Lubell, 97, American illustrator and writer
January 4 – Eve Arnold, 99, American photographer
January 19 – Peter de Francia, 90, French-English painter and illustrator
January 31
* Mike Kelley, 57, American artist and musician
* Dorothea Tanning, 101, American surrealist painter, printmaker, and sculptor.
February 3 – Jorge Glusberg, 79, Argentine author and director of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes MNBA
February 6
* Yasuhiro Ishimoto, 91, Japanese-American photographer
* Antoni Tàpies, 88, Spanish painter, sculptor and art theorist.
February 8- Theophilus Brown, 92, American painter
February 18 – Matt Lamb, 79, American painter
February 24 – Kenneth Price, 77, American ceramicist, sculptor
March 8 – Minoru Mori, 77, Japanese founder of the Mori Art Museum
March 16 – Anita Steckel, 82, American feminist artist
March 27 – Hilton Kramer, 84, American art critic
April 2 – Elizabeth Catlett, 96, American born Mexican sculptor and printmaker
April 6 – Thomas Kinkade, 54, American painter
April 9
* Richard Beyer, 86, American sculptor
* John Golding, 82, British artist, art scholar and curator
April 12 – John Weaver, 92, Canadian sculptor
April 19 - Enrico Pedrini, 72, Italian academic, theorist, and art collector
April 25- Louis le Brocquy, 95, Irish painter
April 27 – David Weiss, 65, Swiss artist
May 2 - Bram Bogart, 90, Dutch born Belgian painter
May 11 – Tony DeZuniga, 79, Filipino illustrator
May 15 – George Wyllie, 90, Scottish artist
May 30 – Barton Lidice Beneš, 69, American artist
June 9 – Paul Jenkins, 88, American painter
June 10 – Georges Mathieu, 91, French painter
June 20 – LeRoy Neiman, 91, American painter
June 22 – Mary Fedden, 96, British painter
June 28 – Ivan Karp, 86, American art dealer
July 22 – Herbert Vogel, 89, American art collector
July 25 – Franz West, 65, Austrian painter and sculptor
July 26 – Karl Benjamin, 86, American painter
July 28 – Adam Cullen, 46, Australian painter
August 6 – Robert Hughes, 74, Australian-born art critic
August 9 – Jan Sawka, 65, Polish-born American artist and architect
August 21 – Hans Josephsohn, 92, German-born Swiss sculptor
September 8 – Mario Armond Zamparelli, 81, American artist and designer
September 11 – Tony Goldman, 68, American real estate developer, art impresario, and preservationist
September 14 – Don Binney, 72, New Zealand painter
September 29 – Mark Wiener, 61, American painter
October 6 – Raoul De Keyser, Belgian painter
October 11 – Edgar Negret, 92, Colombian sculptor
October 15 - Michael Asher, 69, American conceptual artist
October 30 – Lebbeus Woods, 72, American artist and architect
November 13 – Will Barnet, 101, American painter
November 16 – William Turnbull, 90, Scottish artist
November 17 – Arnaud Maggs, 86, Canadian artist and photographer
December 15 – Jeffrey Potter, 94, writer, authored a biography of Jackson Pollock
December 20 – Robert Juniper, 83, Australian artist
December 29 – Edward Meneeley, 85, American painter, sculptor and printmaker