As another year draws to a close, we’re taking a moment to look back on those we lost in the art world in 2021.
The list below is arranged according to the date the obituary was published. Links in italics take you to other news outlets; the others take you to Artnet News coverage.
January Barry Le Va at MoMA PS1 in 2016. © Barry Le Va. Photo: C. J. Nolan, David Nolan Gallery, New York
Barry Le Va, artist
Roger Mandle, museum director
Corky Lee, photographer
Yvonne Brunhammer, museum director
Carol Johnson, architect
February Richard L. Feigen July 19, 1979. (Photo by William N. Jacobellis/New York Post Archives /(c) NYP Holdings, Inc./ Getty Images.
Art Luminaries Pay Tribute to Richard Feigen, the ‘Collector in Dealer’s Clothes’ Revered for Championing Old and New Masters Alike
Italian Sculptor Arturo Di Modica, Whose Charging Bull Sculpture Became a Symbol of an Unbridled Wall Street, Has Died at 80
James Bishop, artist
Jason Benjamin, artist
Robert Herbert, scholar
Charles Hill, art detective
Teresa Burga, artist
Cindy Nemser, art historian
Charles McGee, artist
Guy Brett, critic
Rini Dippel, curator
S. Clay Wilson, cartoonist
Don “Street Invader” Leicht, artist
Howard Smith, artist
March Petr Kellner, courtesy of PPF.
Billionaire Czech Art Collector Petr Kellner Has Died in a Helicopter Crash at Age 56
Ernesto Mallard, artist
Barbara Ess, artist
Patrick O’Connell, activist
Marsha Garland, art dealer
Ramzi Dalloul, collector
Doris Ammann, art dealer
Daniel Wolf, collector
Hugh Newell Jacobsen, architect
Christine Nofchissey McHorse, artist
Richard Driehaus, philanthropist
Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, collector
George Bass, archaeologist
Toko Shinoda, artist
Alexander Klee, artist and arts patron
Tony Martin, artist
April Gianluigi Colalucci. (Photo by Gianni GIANSANTI/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Gianluigi Colalucci, conservator
Pierre Amiet, archaeologist
Hans Rasmus Astrup, collector
James Prigoff, photographer
William T. Wiley, artist
Eleanor Abell Owen, artist
Michelangelo Lovelace, artist
Allon Schoener, curator
Hans Rasmus Astrup, collector
Barbara Marshall, philanthropist
Bob Ragland, artist
Jeffrey Paley, gallerist
Martina Batan, art dealer
Norman Stone, collector
Winfred Rembert, artist
Kornelios Grammenos, artist
Michael Collins, astronaut and artist
Walter Spitz, artist
May Eli Broad. Photo by Nancy Pastor.
Eli Broad, the Proudly ‘Unreasonable’ Art Collector Who Changed the Cultural Landscape of Los Angeles, Dies at 87
Eric Carle, the Illustrator and Children’s Book Author Whose ‘Very Hungry Caterpillar’ Sold More Than 55 Million Copies, Is Dead at 91
Richard Nonas, Whose Hand-Wrought Sculptures Helped Define Post-Minimalism, Has Died at 85
Chi Modu, photographer
Jetta Jones, collector
Arturo Luz, artist
Constance Cain Hungerford, art historian
Alain Kirili, artist
William Fagaly, curator
Arthur Gensler, architect
Tair Salakhov, artist
Julião Sarmento, artist
Mary Beth Edelson, artist
Karl Wirsum, artist
June & July French artist Christian Boltanski. Photo: Julio Cesar Aguilar/AFP via Getty Images.
French Artist Christian Boltanski, Whose Personal Life Informed His Explorations of Memory and Mortality, Has Died at 76
Susann Craig, collector
Reynold Ruffins, artist
Robert Ellison, collector
Jane Kaufman, artist
Lisa French, archaeologist
Douglas Cramer, collector
Tomás Llorens, art historian
Gottfried Böhm, architect
Phillip King, artist
Kenzi Shiokava, artist
Meg Perlman, curator
August Hung Liu at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Photo by Emily Haight, courtesy of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
The Art World Remembers the Late Painter Hung Liu, Who Valorized Everyday Immigrants in Monumental Portraits
Kaari Upson, the Multimedia Artist Who ‘Skewered the Fallacies of the American Dream,’ Has Died at 51
The American Artist Chuck Close, Who Created Larger-Than-Life Photorealist Portraits, Has Died at 81
Ernst van de Wetering, scholar
Kim Guiline, artist
Elizabeth Blackadder, artist
Peter Williams, artist
Nancy Frankel, artist
Ilona Royce Smithkin, artist
September Robert Gentile as seen in This is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist on Netflix.
Robert ‘Bobby’ Gentile, Long Fingered by the FBI as a Suspect in the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist, Dies at 85
Soedarmadji Jean Henry Damais, curator
Heiner Pietzsch, collector
Sandy Grotta, collector
Michel Laclotte, museum director
Charlotte Johnson Wahl, artist
Yolanda López, artist and activist
Billy Apple, artist
Norman Laliberté, artist
Edward Keating, photographer
October Margo Leavin, right, with Wendy Brandow. (Photo by Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Lars Vilks, artist
Margo Leavin, art dealer
Atta Kwami, artist
Kenneth Baker, critic
Marcia Ross, collector
N. Yunupingu, artist
Julie Green, artist
November Virgil Abloh. Photo by Katrina Wittkamp, courtesy MCA Chicago.
Virgil Abloh, Creative Genius Whose Vision for Fashion Transcended Boundaries and Crossed Into Art, Has Died at 41
Art Critic Dave Hickey, Whose Caustic Wit and High-Meets-Low Style Made Him Essential Reading for a Generation, Has Died at Age 82
‘She Gave Us Confidence’: Gallerists, Curators, and Friends Remember the Trailblazing Artist and Poet Etel Adnan, Who Has Died at 96
Jimmie Durham, Whose Trenchant Art Needled American Identity and Colonialism, Has Died at 81
Sylvere Lotringer, publisher
Jaider Esbell, artist
Lance “Rambo” De Los Reyes, artist
Achim Borchardt-Hume, curator
Bettina Grossman, artist
Mick Rock, photographer
December Author and cultural critic bell hooks poses for a portrait on December 16, 1996, in New York City. Photo: Karjean Levine/Getty Images.
Remembering bell hooks, Whose Approachable Yet Pointed Writings Laid the Ground for Intersectional Art Criticism
Lawrence Weiner, a Pioneering Conceptualist Who Used Language to Find the Profound in the Prosaic, Has Died at 79
The American Painter Wayne Thiebaud, Who Transformed Cakes Into Symbols of Joy and Longing, Has Died at 101
Jenni Crain, artist and dealer
Richard Rogers, architect
Alison Collins, dealer
Oriol Bohigas, architect
Vassos Karageorghis, archaeologist
Robert Cumming, artist
Clark Richert, artist
Sabine Weiss, photographer
Beverly Russell, design journalist and editor
