2002 in art

Events

• 10 July – At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents is sold for £49.5million (US$76.2 million) 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.

Full date unknown

• Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art opens to the public in Amherst, Massachusetts.
• A sculpture by Henri Matisse, Reclining Nude I (Dawn), is sold for US$ 9.2 million, a record for a Matisse sculpture.

Awards

• Archibald Prize – Cherry Hood, Simon Tedeschi Unplugged
• Beck's Futures – Toby Paterson
• Hugo Boss Prize – Pierre Huyghe
• Turner Prize – Keith Tyson
• Wynne Prize – Angus Nivision, Remembering Rain

Works

• Anish Kapoor – Marsyas (Tate Modern)

Deaths

January to June

• 30 January – Inge Morath, Austrian photographer (b. 1923)
• February – Víctor Grippo, painter, engraver and sculptor, the father of conceptual art in Argentina (b. 1936)
• 12 March – Jean-Paul Riopelle, Canadian painter and sculptor (b. 1923)
• 22 May – Niki de Saint Phalle, French sculptor, painter, and film maker (b.1930).
• 12 June – Bill Blass, American fashion designer (b.1922).

July to December

• 8 July – Ward Kimball, American Academy Award-winning animator (b.1914).
• 13 July – Yousuf Karsh, Armenian-Canadian photographer (b.1908).
• 17 July – George Rickey, American kinetic sculptor (b.1907).
• 22 August – Richard Lippold, American sculptor (b.1915).
• 23 November – Roberto Matta, Chilean painter (b.1911).
• 9 December
  • Ian Hornak, American painter and draughtsman (b.1944).
  • Stan Rice, American poet and artist (b.1942).
• 26 December – Herb Ritts, American photographer (b.1952).