1939 (2 November): Birth of Richard Serra, in San Francisco.

1957-1961: Student at the University of California (Berkeley and Santa Barbara). Serra obtains a masters degree in English literature, working in a steel foundry to pay for his studies. 

1961-1964: Serra studies art at Yale, where he meets Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt and Frank Stella, all of whom teach at the university.

1963: Works with Josef Albers on his book The Interaction of Color.

1965: Sojourn in Paris, where he discovers the work of Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), in the sculptor's reconstructed studio at the Musée National d’Art Moderne. Serra also spends several months in Florence, in the same year.

1966: First solo exhibition, in Rome, at Galleria La Salita.

1966: Settles in New York. Meets Carl Andre, Eva Hesse, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Brune Nauman and Robert Smithson.

1966-1967: Creates his first sculptures using unconventional materials such as rubber and neon.

1967-1968: Writes a list of action verbs ('rolling', 'pressing', 'cutting', 'folding' etc.) that serves as a manifesto for his sculptural work.

1968-1970: Creates the Splashings series: projections of molten lead into corner spaces, or the intersections of wall and floor.

1968: Produces Hands, a series of films in which hands (Serra's and others) try to catch pieces of lead, or collect every last particle of fibreglass from a wooden parquet floor, etc.

1969: First exhibition in New York. One Ton Prop (House of Cards) is a pivotal work in Richard Serra's career, composed of four sheets of lead measuring 120 cm square, balanced one against the other.

1969: Stacked Steel Slabs, from Serra's Skullcracker series. The sheets of steel are placed one on top of the other, rising to a precarious balancing point.

1970: Collaborates on the construction of Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, in Utah.

1970: Visits temples and Zen gardens during a six-week tour of Japan, with profound implications for his work.

1970: To Encircle Base Plate Hexagram, Right Angles Inverted. Work installed in the Bronx, New York, consisting of a circle measuring 7.9 metres in diameter, made from a 20-centimetre wide length of steel set into the ground.

1970-1972: Shift. Outdoor installation in Ontario, Canada. Sheets of steel standing upright on the ground form a broken line extending for over 300 metres.

1972-1975: Sight Point (For Leo Castelli). First major vertical work, consisting of three sheets, each measuring 12.20 metres high and 3.10 metres wide.

1981: Installation of Tilted Arc on New York's Federal Plaza. The work takes the form of a slightly inclined wall of steel, 37 metres long and 3 metres high.

1983: Installation of Clara Clara at the Tuileries gardens in Paris, consisting of two curved steel sheets, 35 metres long and three metres high. Solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou (Centre National d'Art Moderne).

1985: Philibert et Marguerite, a French public commission for the cloister of the abbey museum of Brou, at Bourg-en-Bresse.

1989: Tilted Arc in New York is dismantled following protests from local residents and office workers.

1990: Exhibition at the CAPC in Bordeaux: Threats of Hell.

1991: Accepts the commission for the Hall of Witness at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington). Gravity is created two years later.

1991:  French public commission for Octagon for Saint Eloi, Chagny (Burgundy).

1992: Installation of Intersection at Basel, near the Tinguely fountain. Weight and Measure, Tate Gallery, London.

1993: Private commission from François Pinault for the grounds of Château de la Mormaire (Ile-de-France).

1997: Installation of Snake at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

1996-1999: Creation of the Torqued Ellipses, gigantic curved steel sculptures seen for the first time at the Dia Foundation, New York (1997).

2005: Inauguration of a permanent installation at the Guggenheim Museum, in Bilbao: The Matter of Time.

2007: Retrospective at MoMA, New York - Richard Serra, Sculpture: Forty Years.

2008: Inauguration of Promenade, a new work for the MONUMENTA series, at the Grand Palais, Paris.

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