# 1977 in art

Events from the year 1977 in art.

## Events

* April 19 – Yale Center for British Art gallery, designed by Louis Kahn (died 1974), opens to the public in New Haven, Connecticut, United States.
* May 8–24 – Suzanne Lacy's extended performance piece about rape, Three Weeks in May takes place in Los Angeles.
* September 12 – American poet Robert Lowell dies having suffered a heart attack in the back of a cab in New York City while returning to his ex-wife Elizabeth Hardwick carrying a portrait of his current wife Lady Caroline Blackwood by her first husband Lucian Freud.
* Starr Kempf constructs the first of his "wind sculptures".
* documenta 6 takes place.
* Douglas Crimp curates "Pictures," featuring Jack Goldstein, Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine and others, at Artists Space in New York.
* Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in Iran, designed by Kamran Diba, is inaugurated.

### Awards

* Archibald Prize: Kevin Connor – Robert Klippel

## Exhibitions

* Retrospective of Valentine Hugo at the Centre Culturel Thibaud de Champagne, Troyes.
* Retrospective of Frida Kahlo at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City.

## Works

* Marina Abramović and Ulay – Expansion in Space
* Walter De Maria – The Lightning Field (land art)
* Audrey Flack - Marilyn (Vanitas)
* Lucian Freud – Naked Man with Rat
* Tina Girouard - "Pinwheel" (performance instillation at the New Orleans Museum of Art)
* Gilbert & George – Series of Red Morning works
* David Hockney – My Parents
* Donald Judd – Untitled (Meter Box)
* Nabil Kanso – The Vortices of Wrath (Lebanon 1977)
* Jacob Lawrence – Self-portrait
* Jacques Lipchitz – Bellerophon Taming Pegasus (sculpture, New York City)
* Kathleen McCullough – Cat in Repose (sculpture, Portland, Oregon)
* Gordon Matta-Clark – Jacob's Ladder
* Ivan Meštrović – Martin Kukučín (sculptures)
* Robert Morris – Williams Mirrors
* Maria Prymachenko - Two-Headed Chicken
* David Shepherd – Tiger in the Sun
* Cindy Sherman – Untitled Film Stills (through 1980)
* C. Talacca – Bust of Simón Bolívar (bronze, Houston, Texas)
* Jean Tinguely – Tinguely Fountain and Carnival Fountain (Fasnachtsbrunnen) (both kinetic sculptures in Basel)
* Don Wilson – Interlocking Forms (sculpture, Portland, Oregon)
* Felix de Weldon – Statue of Ty Cobb (bronze, Royston, Georgia)
* Audrey Flack - World War II (Vanitas)

## Births

* 8 February – Yucef Merhi, Venezuelan artist, poet and computer programmer.
* 16 April – Florentijn Hofman, Dutch installation artist.
* 14 May – Emeka Ogboh, Nigerian sound and installation artist.
* 5 October – Hugleikur Dagsson, Icelandic cartoonist
* Michael Dean, English sculptor.
* Gregory Halpern, American photographer.

## Deaths

* 27 April – Charles Alston, American artist, muralist, and teacher (b. 1907).
* 27 June – Ivan Tabaković, Serbian painter (b. 1898)
* 3 July – Gertrude Abercrombie, American painter (b. 1909).
* 21 July – Lee Miller, American photographer (b. 1907).
* 23 August – Naum Gabo, Russian sculptor (b. 1890).
* 3 September – Gianni Vella, Maltese painter and cartoonist (b. 1885)
* 11 September – Augustus Dunbier, American painter (b. 1888).
* 23 September – John Nash, English painter, illustrator, and engraver (b. 1893).
* 25 September – William McMillan, Scottish sculptor (b. 1887) (victim of assault).
* 20 October – Marie-Thérèse Walter, mistress of Pablo Picasso (b. 1909).
* 4 November – Keith Vaughan, English painter (b. 1912) (suicide).
* 5 November – René Goscinny, French comic book author, editor and humorist (b. 1926).
* 21 December – Seán Keating, Irish romantic-realist painter (b. 1889).

### Full date unknown

* Philip Lindsey Clark, English sculptor (b. 1889)
* Pan Yuliang, Chinese-born painter (b. 1899)
* Walter Pritchard, Scottish stained glass artist, muralist and sculptor (b. 1905)