Tonight, I would like to show you a beautiful painting.
It has the title "Le Port" and has been attributed to the French impressionist Eugène Boudin.
This painting belonged to Dr. Henri Widmer, an avid collector, who owned more than 600 works of art.
In 1939, he donated the painting to the Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, where it can still be admired to this day.
Now, just imagine you are the museum curator, and it's your responsibility to make sure that this beautiful painting goes through a proper authentication process before being put in the museum for the visitors to enjoy it.
In the past, if your goal was to find out whether an art piece is original or not, you would have to submit it to an expert for authentication.
But experts required to see the art in original.
So you would have to pack your painting and ship it off to a different country for appraisal.
So your museum wouldn't pay just for the evaluation itself, but also for the transportation and for the insurance.
Then you would have to wait for some months, or sometimes even for some years, to receive an answer.
