Wallace Collection to start lending artworks

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Wallace Collection to start lending artworks | Following a reexamination of Lady Wallace’s will by lawyers and art experts, the Wallace Collection in London will lend items from its collection to national and international galleries for the first time in 119 years. Bequeathed to the nation in 1897, the collection contains well-known artworks such as Frans Hals’ The Laughing Cavalier, Lady with a Fan by Diego Velázquez, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing. ‘For me it is a bit like the Hobbit and you see that dragon just sitting on the treasure, not letting anybody get close to it,’ said director Xavier Bray. ‘This is a major new chapter for the Wallace.’

Huguette Caland, 1931–2019 | Lebanese artist Huguette Caland has died at the age of 88. A sculptor, painter and fashion designer, Caland – whose father became Lebanon’s first president post-independence in 1943 – was known for her bright, erotically charged paintings, as well as the kaftans she made in the 1970s for Pierre Cardin. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the British Museum in London, and LACMA. She had her first solo museum exhibition in the UK at Tate St Ives this year.

Josef Albers mural returns to Manhattan skyscraper | Manhattan, a 1960s mural designed by Josef Albers for the lobby of the Walter Gropius-designed MetLife Building in New York, has been recreated and returned to its original location. The original mural was removed in 2000 and disposed of when its Formica panels were found to contain asbestos in 2005; the new mural is an exact replica of the original artwork’s geometric red, black, and white tiles.

Recommended reading | From the New York Times, the Italian fisherman who created an underwater museum of large Carrara marble sculptures to prevent illegal trawling along the Tuscan coast.