2026 in art

Significant events relating to the year 2026 in art are listed below.

Events

• February 5 – Michelangelo's preparatory sketch of a foot for The Libyan Sibyl is sold at Christie’s for $27.2 million including fees.
• March 2 – The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam announces the retrieval of the long-lost Rembrandt painting The Vision of Zacharias in the Temple (1633).
• March 22 – Paintings Les Poissons by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Still Life with Cherries by Paul Cézanne, and Odalisque on the Terrace by Henri Matisse are stolen from the Italian museum Villa dei Capolavori by four masked men.
• April 19 - The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) opens its new David Geffen galleries designed by architect Peter Zumthor, to exhibit its'permanent collection.
• April 29 – Banksy erects a statue in central London overnight.
• April 30 – The entire Venice Biennale jury resigns, 9 days before the scheduled start of this year's show, over the inclusion of Russia.
• May 1 – it is announced that a Botticelli painting of The Virgin and Child Enthroned from the 1470s will remain in England, having been purchased for the collection of A. Gary Klesch, and will initially be loaned to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
• June (projected) – The 20th century art collection of British financier Joe Lewis is offered for sale at Sotheby's London; it is expected to be the most valuable to come up for auction in the UK.

Exhibitions

• March 5 until August 2 – Carol Bove at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

• March 5 until April 11 – ''Hugo Winder-Lind: Clouds of Limitless and Expanding Joy'' at the Isabel Sullivan Gallery in New York City.

• March 15 until July 26 – Willem de Kooning: The Breakthrough Years, 1945–50 at the Princeton University Art Museum in Princeton, New Jersey.

• March 29 until June 28 – Raphael: Sublime Poetry at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Deaths

January

• January 5 – Molly Parkin, 93, Welsh painter, novelist and journalist (born 1932)
• January 8 – Hiroshi Nakamura, 93, Japanese surrealist painter (born 1932)
• January 9 – Beatriz González, 93, Colombian painter, sculptor, and art historian (born 1932)
• January 11 – Philip Leider, 96, American founding editor-in-chief of ArtForum magazine (born 1929)
• January 13 – Alfred Grimm, 82, German object artist, sculptor, and painter (born 1943)
• January 18 – Scott Adams, 68, American cartoonist of Dilbert (born 1957)
• January 19 – Valentino, 93, Italian fashion designer and art collector (born 1922)
• January 22 – Marian Goodman, 97, American art dealer, gallery owner, (born 1928)

February

• February 14 - Henrike Naumann, 41, German sculptor (born 1984)
• February 18 – Roger von Gunten, 92, Swiss-born Mexican painter (born 1933)
• February 19 – Isaiah Zagar, 86, American mosaic artist (born 1939)
• February 20 – Peter Stämpfli, 88, Swiss painter and sculptor (born 1937)
• February 22 – Iris Cantor, 95, American philanthropist, Head of the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation, (born 1931)
• February 24
  • Stephen Koch, 84, American writer, historian, teacher, and manager of the Peter Hujar art estate (born 1941)
  • Giancarlo Politi, 89, Italian art critic, founder of Flash Art (born 1937) (death announced on this date)

March

• March 5 – Pedro Friedeberg, 90, Italian-born Mexican visual artist (born 1936)
• March 6 – Thaddeus Mosley, 99, American sculptor (born 1926)
• March 20 – Calvin Tomkins, 100, American author and art critic (The New Yorker) (born 1925}
• March 25 – Pat Steir, 87, American painter and printmaker. (born 1938)
• March 30 – Melvin Edwards, 88, American sculptor, (born 1937)

April

• April 3 – Pearl Fryar, 86, American topiary artist (born 1939)
• April 10 – Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, 46, American painter (born 1979)
• April 24 – George Herms, 90, American asseemblage artist
• April 29 – Georg Baselitz, 88, German painter and sculptor.