Country Summary for GEORGIA

Definitions

'Antiquaries'—objects that are a hundred or more years old possessing a certain value from the point of view of culture.

'An item of material culture'—a movable or immovable valuable object, its part or aggregates of objects possessing historical, archaeological, ethnographic, urban architectural, artistic, scientific, technological or other type of value; a sample of modern production that has been granted the status of a monument according to the prescribed law. (CHP Art. 3)

'Export of cultural property'—trafficking of cultural property existing within the territory of Georgia through crossing the customs borders of Georgia with any purpose without obligation of their return in the established timeframes.

'Import of cultural property'—import of cultural property through crossing the customs borders of Georgia with any purpose without obligation of their return in the established timeframes.

'Collection of cultural property'—a group of objects gathered according to the common or diverse signs, which, disregarding cultural significance of each of them, together as a whole, has a historical, artistic, scientific or other cultural significance. (EICP Art. 3)

This law applies to all objects or their collections provided below are regarded as cultural property:

(a) created within the territory of Georgia by the Georgian people or other peoples resident within Georgia;

(b) created within the territory of Georgia by the foreign nationals not having citizenship of Georgia;

(c) found within the territory of Georgia;

(d) received as a gift, or purchased with the consent of the competent authorities of the foreign states of origin of such a cultural property;

(e) acquired by archeological, ethnographical, natural science or other missions of Georgia with the consent of the competent authorities of the foreign states of origin of such cultural property;

(f) cultural property, which ahs been subject of an exchange. (EICP Art.4)

(1) This law applies to the following categories of objects:

(a) A piece of fine arts created with any material and any technique;

(b) A piece of decorative, applied art created with any material and any technique;

(c) Objects connected with historical events or with the creative activities of historical persons;

(d) Objects and/or parts of objects discovered during archaeological excavations or in culture layers by chance;

(e) Cult objects made of any material and technique;

(f) Unique manuscripts, incunabula, civic and clerical documents, books, diplomas and publications possessing historical, artistic, scientific and literary interest;

(g) Documents of the National Archive, including photo, phono, film and video archives;

(h) Ethnographical objects;

(i) Pieces of unique furniture and musical instruments;

(j) Monuments connected with the development of science and technology;

(k) original artistic assemblages and montages in any material;

(l) original engravings, prints, lithographs and original forms of their printing;

(m) dismembered (movable) parts and fragments of artistic, architectural and historical monuments, monuments of monumental art;

(n) unique manuscripts, incunabula, poliotypes, printed documents, books, deeds, civil and secular documents and publications singly or in the collections are of special historical, artistic, scientific and literature importance;

(o) postage stamps, other philatelic materials, revenue and similar stamps singly or in collections;

(p) rare specimens of flora and fauna, minerals and anatomy and all the other rare specimens of interest for anatomy, paleontology and mineralogy singly or in collections;

(q) other movable objects, including copies of historical, artistic, scientific or other kinds of cultural significance and protected by the state as the monuments of history and culture;

(2) The present law does not refer to modern works produced as souvenirs, also items of serial or mass production having cult functions. (EICP Art. 5)

 

Registry

Movable monuments and objects with movable monuments signs are subject to obligatory State registration disregarding the owner. (CHP Art. 50 §1)

The owner (user) is obliged to address the Ministry…to include the object in his/her ownership into the List of Objects with Movable Monument Signs. (CHP Art. 50 §6)

The owner (user) of a movable monument has the right to demand confidentiality of the information on the movable monument in his/her ownership. (CHP Art. 51)