Video: French fashion group chief shows how art brings people together

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 once looted from Beijing's Old Summer Palace.

On the same day in 2013, Francois-Henri Pinault accompanied his father, Francois Pinault, founder of Kering, to attend a ceremony at the National Museum of China, where the Pinault family's donation of the two heads were 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 for the public. If you keep it for you, 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.