The controversial loan of the Gelman collection has taken a further twist after campaigners started legal action against the Mexican government and Spanish financial firm Banco Santander over the deal.

It comes after it was reported the collection, which includes works by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, is serving as collateral for a $150 million loan from the Spanish banking giant to its owner Mexican millionaire Marcelo Zambrano.

That raised fears the collection, which is now managed by Santander which wants to show some of it at their new cultural center in Spain, could be lost if the owners default on the loan.

A statement issued today by the Defence of the Gelman Collection group said they had already "obtained a public commitment" from Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum that the collection will return in 2028 two years earlier than previously agreed.

But it said the Santander deal sets a precedent that Mexican law, which prevents the export of the country's cultural treasures, could become "less certain for every collection that follows".

The 160-strong collection was created by Jacques and Natasha Gelman, who made their money in the Mexican film industry, and includes work by Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

The number of objects currently kept out of sight underground at Turin's Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. They will be put on show as part of a planned $31.3 million redevelopment of the building which will make its basement publicly accessible as a "living storage" center.

Artifacts worth an estimated $95 million have been seized from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in the last 10 years by teams investigating cultural trafficking.

The figure, first reported in The New York Times, is compiled from records from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg whose Antiquities Trafficking Unit is led by Matthew Bogdanos.

He criticized the museum, saying the amount of seizures from its collection "spoke for themselves", adding: "The question has to be asked, ‘Why are we the ones doing this?’"

But a museum spokesman stressed restitution work took time and was "not always straightforward", adding: "The Met doesn’t want any stolen art in our collection."

Among the items taken from the museum, led by director Max Hollein, were a 2,000-year-old bronze statuette from Turkey and a golden headpiece from ancient Egypt.

Racehorse owner Robert Ogden backed plenty of winners in his time and Christie's Old Masters sale in London last night proved the businessman who died in 2022 had an eye for art as well.

In 2006, he paid a then-record $2.7 million for Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of British military hero the Duke of Wellington.

Last night it came back to Christie's where it sold for $12.7 million, setting a new auction record for the artist.

Maja Markovic, who was in charge of the auction, said the sale of the "beautifully preserved portrait" showed "the continued strength of the Old Master market".

The sale as a whole brought in $51.4 million with other works sold including two by Jan van Huysum and a Rubens’s sketch.

1 - Maribel Lopez is set to become the new director of the Barcelona-based Miro Foundation. Currently director of the ARCO Madrid art fair, she will replace Marko Daniel at the head of the organization which has an annual budget of almost $16 million and employs around 80 staff.

2 - Staff at New York's Guggenheim Museum have voted to strike after contract negotiations broke down. Recent layoffs, low wages and healthcare costs at the institution, led by CEO and director Mariet Westermann, were all cited in a statement by staff announcing the move but no date has been given for a potential walkout.

3 - London's Estorick Collection and Compton Verney gallery in the English midlands are teaming up to exhibit work by Italian artist Carla Accardi. The shows, which have been developed with her estate, will run simultaneously from January to June next year.

4 - Architect Norman Foster was pictured in the UK press wearing a virtual reality headset as he visited the site of a planned memorial to Queen Elizabeth II in St James's Park, London. His firm are designing the site which will include gardens, a translucent glass bridge and a sculpture of the monarch by Martin Jennings inspired by a 1955 portrait by Pietro Annigoni.

5 - Tens of thousands of people logged on to the British Museum website this morning to try to get tickets to see The Bayeux Tapestry. The historic masterpiece is returning to the UK from France for the first time in almost 1,000 years and within minutes around 40,000 people had joined the ticket queue.

6 - Pierre-Olivier Costa, the president of the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations in Marseille, has been suspended by the French Ministry of Culture. A former chief of staff to French first lady, Brigitte Macron, he has been the subject of complaints from staff of harassment.