Return of bronze heads from France to China signifies how countries can build bridges to the future, Lin Qi reports.
Francois-Henri Pinault visited the National Museum of China in Beijing for “memory reviving” on Friday.
There, the chairman and chief executive officer of the French luxury group, Kering, saw the rat and rabbit bronze heads, two of the 12 zodiac animal sculptures that had been looted from Beijing”s Old Summer Palace.
On June 28, 2013, Francois-Henri Pinault accompanied his father, Francois Pinault, founder of Kering, to a ceremony at the National Museum of China, where the family’s donation of the two heads was officially unveiled and added to the museum’s collection.
Since then, the two bronze items have been on display at The Road to Rejuvenation, a long-term thematic exhibition at the National Museum of China.
“As my father said to me once, the best way to protect and to preserve art is to make it visible to the public. If you keep it for yourself, no one sees it,” Francois-Henri Pinault tells China Daily.
For this trip, he was not only to see the two sculptures, but also to attend the premiere of a documentary, The Long Journey Home.