List of Heritage Treasures – unnecessary form of heritage protection?

Abstract

When analyzing the changes in Polish law devoted to the protection of cultural heritage, one can get the impression that the legislator consistently strives to ensure increased and effective protection of monuments by gradually expanding the catalog of forms of their protection. Possible legal forms of protection are regulated in the Act of 23 July 2003 on the protection and care of monuments, and a relatively new solution is the entry on the List of Heritage Treasures, introduced by the 2016 amendment. However, the list has been controversial from the very beginning, and its genesis has two roots. On the one hand, it is a response to one of the basic problems of the monument protection system in Poland, i.e. sui generis discrimination of movable monuments, and on the other – the establishment of the List of Heritage Treasures was the result of disputes that had been going on for many years between museum professionals, conservators and art historians, and the Princes Czartoryski Foundation for lending Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Lady with an Ermine for exhibitions abroad. While reflecting on the List of Heritage Treasures, one should consider how the List of Heritage Treasures is shaped in practice and whether it is really a form necessary in our system of legal monument protection.