The Metropolitan Museum of Art has canceled plans to loan items to the Kremlin Museum, making that show the latest casualty in an ongoing legal and diplomatic dispute that has suspended Russian loans to American museums.
The conflict centers on an archive of thousands of religious books and documents that has been held in Russia since World War II.
Last July, a United States court ruled that the Brooklyn-centered Chabad-Lubavitch movement had rightful ownership to the trove, and Russia banned all exhibitions traveling to the United States in response.
“It is going to be the policy of the museum that there has to be some equity for lending to be resumed,” Met spokesman Harold Holzer told ARTinfo.
He added that the institution will not lend to Russian museums as long as that country’s loan embargo remains in place.
Russian officials had warned museums that artworks traveling to the U.S. could be seized and used as leverage to force the release of the trove of documents, though it is unclear whether Russian museums are holding off on loans for fear of U.S. seizure or — considering that the U.S. 1965 Immunity From Seizure Act protects foreign works that are on loan — of government reprisals in Russia.
Read more at ARTinfo.com
If the Russian government releases the Schneersohn Library they will be inundated by numerous other calms.
They hold much stolen mateial in their vaults.
This is a very difficult battle, which will drag on for a very long time.
It”s amazing that this fear has taken on a life of its own. Chabad already said clearly they would not seek to seize other works, and yet Russia’s fear of it happening anyway has started a process that actually may bear some fruit with time.