February - A painting of a Head of an Old Man, previously rejected as an authentic Rembrandt, from the reserve collection of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, is confirmed through dendrochronology as painted on a board which had been in Rembrandt's studio.[2]
May 26 - It is announced that this year's Turner Prize award in the United Kingdom is to be replaced by a bursary for 10 artists which will be announced in July due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[15]
June 11 - Fugitive art dealer Inigo Philbrick, accused of swindling artworks valued in excess of $20 million US is apprehended and arrested by U.S. government agents on the South Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu and then transported to the U.S. territory of Guam to face federal charges.[17][18][19]
July - It is announced that the history of Salvator Mundi (c.1500) by Leonardo da Vinci, the most expensive artwork on record ever sold will be the subject of a forthcoming Broadway musical set to take the stage in 2021.[22]
July 15 - A statue rendered in black resin by Marc Quinn of a British Black Lives Matter protestor, A Surge of Power (Jen Reid) 2020, is installed clandestinely by the artist on the plinth vacated by overthrow of the Statue of Edward Colston in Bristol without official permission;[24] it is removed from this location 24 hours later by Bristol City Council which tweets "This morning we removed the sculpture. It will be held at our museum for the artist to collect or donate to our collection".[25]
July 22 - Berlin-based American-born German curator Rebeccah Blum is murdered and the suspect in the case, her former partner, the English Berlin-based photographer, Saul Fletcher, commits suicide.[26][27]