Geffrye Museum to reopen as Museum of the Home

Our daily round-up of news from the art world 

Geffrye Museum to reopen as Museum of the Home | The Geffrye Museum in east London is set to reopen in the summer of next year, rebranding as the Museum of the Home. The museum is housed in the almshouses built in 1714 with a bequest by Robert Geffrye, a former lord mayor of London – but its collections are not directly linked with Geffrye, and the museum’s director, Sonia Solicari, has said that the museum felt that it ‘could achieve a lot more and engage a lot more people by changing the name’. The museum has been closed since January 2018, to undergo an £18m refurbishment that will double its space for visitors.

Juan Pablo Langlois (1936–2019) | The Chilean artist Juan Pablo Langlois has died. The sculptor’s most famous works include his 1969 installation Cuerpos Blandos (Soft Bodies) at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago – a 500-foot-long plastic sleeve, wrapped around the interior of the museum to suggest a vast intestine. He was given a retrospective at the Centro Cultural Matucana 100 in Santiago in 2012, and his work is in the collections of the national fine art museums of Chile and Venezuela, as well as Princeton University.

Three artists elected to Hong Kong District Councils | Three artists were among the pro-democracy candidates who were successful in Sunday’s District Council elections in Hong Kong, taking 389 of 452 seats. Susi Law Wai-shan, Clara Cheung and Wong Tin Yan each ran as independents in the elections, which had an unprecedented turnout of 71.2 per cent.