As ARTINFO previously reported, Russia took the unusual step in January of banning all art loans to the U.S. following an American court's ruling that Moscow must give back a disputed archive to Brooklyn's Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement. Russian culture minister Alexander Avdeyev said that he feared that artworks traveling to the U.S. could be seized in order to force the return of the trove of documents. Now the Metropolitan Museum has responded by canceling an upcoming loan to the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, and future Met loans are also in jeopardy.

A Met spokesperson confirmed to ARTINFO via email that an upcoming loan slated for a Dior show at the Pushkin has been canceled. Loans are also scheduled for an exhibition of fashions by Paul Poiret at the Kremlin Museum in September, and the Met will decide in July whether or not to send the items, "depending on whether the embargo is lifted."

The Russian refusal to lend artworks has already disrupted several American exhibitions, including shows at the Met. Russia blocked the loan of a Cézanne painting for the Met's recent exhibition of the artist's card players, and four other works were banned from traveling to the museum's current show "Rooms With a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century." Loans of several of Gauguin's Tahitian paintings for a National Gallery exhibition were also canceled. More dramatically, 37 icons from the Andrey Rublev Museum were pulled from a show in progress called "Treasures from Moscow" at the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, Massachusetts, with a Russian curator showing up to personally oversee their return to Russia.

Many feel that the Russian government has overreacted to the legal dispute with its wide-sweeping art loan ban. Gregory Guroff, president of the Maryland-based Foundation for International Art and Education, told the Worcester, Massachusetts Telegram in March that Russia's fears of the artworks being seized are unfounded and that they "are calling back items that are protected and granted immunity by the State Department." The Met spokesperson said that "we will weigh subsequent cases as they are presented, and of course hope the embargo is lifted so we can resume the exchange of loans as in years past, without incident." According to a recent AP report, the diplomatic standoff has grown to such proportions that the U.S. Justice Department may soon weigh in on the matter.