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New building planned for Georgia's National Centre of Antiquities - and a Museum District





The building of the Museum of Fine Arts, built in 1830, is in a deplorable state and its infrastructure needs a complete renovation, said the museum’s directors when they announced that a new building is planned.

The original building was built for other purposes, but the museum has been housed there for more than a hundred years.

The inappropriate climatic conditions were also a concern for generations of previous museum directors. According to the many letters of museum directors, Sh. Amiranashvili, T. Sanikidze and N. Lomouri, preserved in the museum’s archives, all three of them asked the government for funding support to protect the museum's collections. For decades their attempts failed to attract funding to equip the museum to new standards and to provide appropriate conditions.

In 2016, the Georgian National Museum secured the adjacent 3,100 m² building and its design renovation has been completed. In the process of planning the new building, the rehabilitation will adopt world class standards.

The main component for museum reforms in Georgia is the formation of the Georgian National Museum National Centre of Antiquities (a conservation-restoration centre). In 2009, a detailed plan was prepared, under a EU-funded project, in cooperation with the Georgian National Museum, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, and Berlin State Museums.

Along with these projects, there will be the inauguation of the ‘Museum District’ – the district of all museums within close proximity of each other in the centre of Tbiisi. The formation of the group of museums located in the centre was already initiated by Shalva Amiranashvili in 1973 - when he adopted the idea of the Berlin Museum Island.

Today, the Georgian National Museum is actively cooperating with the Berlin Museum Island. Under the partnership, the Georgian National Museum and the Berlin Museum Island jointly prepared the Tbilisi Museum District development plan. In 2012, the exhibition and the international conference "Berlin Museum Island - Tbilisi Museum District: Keeping the past - facing the future" were dedicated to the concept of the museum district in Tbilisi.

At present, the detailed plan of the National Centre of Antiquities is already completed and the preliminary work is underway. 





MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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