THEFT, LOOTING, TRAFFICKING, WHEN OUR HERITAGE IS IN DANGER

Mission preservation

An episode from the series FRENCH HERITAGE JOURNEYS (90MNS)

Synopsis

In the art market, curators, archaeologists, experts, and historians battle forgers, traffickers, looters, and swindlers who try to sell stolen or fake works.

It is a struggle between the lure of profit on the one hand and, on the other, the need to preserve the world's heritage and the work and memory of artists.

To illustrate this conflict, we follow the rescue of a Roman wreck; two archaeologists who are fighting against the looting of the Greek city of Cyrene in Lybia; we discover the counterfeits of the Louvre and how museums are guarding against this scourge; we meet a real forger and the world's leading expert on Corot, the most falsified painter of the century.