Events from the year 1998 in art.

• April – Fans of Newcastle United F.C. decorate the newly erected Angel of the North sculpture with a giant replica of Alan Shearer's no. 9 shirt. Police remove the shirt after about twenty minutes.^[1]
• 3 December – 44 governments participating in the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets approve the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art (or "Washington Declaration"), requiring efforts to be made to restore looted art to its original owners or their heirs.^[2]
• Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (in the Kulturforum), designed by Heinz Hilmer and Christoph Sattler, opens.^[3]

• 1 November – Jackson Pollock retrospective opens at MoMA.^[4]

• Archibald Prize – Lewis Miller, Portrait of Allan Mitelman No 3^[5]
• Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester Artist of the Year – Wendell Castle^[6]
• Gran Prix d'Antoine Pevsner – Constantine Andreou^[7]
• Hugo Boss Prize – Douglas Gordon^[8]
• Turner Prize – Chris Ofili^[9]

• Mark Calderon – Floribunda (bronze, Portland, Oregon)^[10]
• Alan Collins – Legacy of Leadership (bronze, Berrien Springs, Michigan)^[11]
• Michael Condron – Martian tripod (Woking, England)^[12]
• Martin Creed – Work No 200: Half the air in a given space^[13]
• Anthony Gormley – Angel of the North^[14]
• David Hockney – A Bigger Grand Canyon^[15]
• Mary Miss - Framing Union Square in the 14th Street–Union Square station in New York City^[16]
• Ron Mueck – Ghost^[17]
• Chris Ofili – No Woman No Cry^[18]
• Valerie Otani – Folly Bollards (bronzes, Portland, Oregon)^[19]
• Stephen Robin – Federal Triangle Flowers (sculptures, Washington, D.C.)^[20]
• Piotr Uklański - The Nazis^[21]
• Rachel Whiteread – Water Tower (New York City)^[22]

• Fossi, Gloria (1998). Botticelli. Primavera (Inglese ed.). Giunti Editore Firenze Italy. ISBN 978-88-09-21459-0.
• Boyd, William (1998). Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928–1960. Cambridge: 21 Publishing. ISBN 1-901785-01-7. A hoax biography, launched on 1 April.

• 23 January – Victor Pasmore, English artist and architect (b. 1908)^[23]
• 29 January - Karin Jonzen, British sculptor (b. 1914)
• 7 March – Karen Holtsmark, Norwegian painter (b. 1907)^[24]
• 12 March – Beatrice Wood, American artist and ceramicist (b. 1893)^[25]
• 13 March – Bill Reid, Canadian artist (b. 1920)^[26]
• 7 April – James McIntosh Patrick, Scottish landscape painter (b. 1907)^[27]
• 25 April – Wright Morris, American novelist, photographer, and essayist (b. 1910)^[28]
• 3 May – Otto Bettmann, German American image archivist (b. 1903)^[29]
• 6 May – Sybil Connolly, Welsh-Irish fashion designer (b. 1921)^[30]
• 18 May – Enid Marx, English textile designer (b. 1902)
• June – Kali, Polish-American portrait painter and Polish Resistance agent during World War II (b. 1918)^[31]
• 8 October – Zhang Chongren, Chinese artist and sculptor (b. 1907)^[32]
• 25 October – Dick Higgins, English composer, poet, printer and early Fluxus artist (b. 1938)^[33]
• 3 November – Bob Kane, American comic book artist and writer (b. 1915)^[34]
• 2 December – Brian Stonehouse, English painter and Special Operations Executive agent during World War II (b. 1918)^[35]
• 30 December – Joan Brossa, Catalan poet, playwright, graphic designer and plastic artist (b. 1919)^[36]
• Claude Serre, French cartoonist (b. 1938)^[37]
• Wolf Vostell, German painter and sculptor (b. 1932)^[38]