(CNN) -- After Haiti's devastating earthquake, Georges Nader picked up Hector Hyppolite's oil-on-cardboard painting like a father would a wounded child. He could barely hold back his tears. "Vase et Fleurs," glorious in its art naif simplicity, lay before him like a complicated jigsaw puzzle. Pieces were frazzled, some were even missing. Like so many other things in Haiti, the painting by one of Haiti's foremost artists was gone. A masterpiece lost, and with it a part of Haiti's history. No one would ever be able to put it together, Nader believed, as he fished through a demolished museum in Port-au-Prince that housed 12,000 pieces of art collected by his family.
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A still life painting by Haitian artist Hector Hyppolite was damaged in the earthquake
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Gallery owner Georges Nader wanted to have it -- and thousands of other pieces -- restored
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In a troubled land, art serves a vital role as the nation's memory
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The Haitian government has been working with the Smithsonian on restoration
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'Saving Grace,' a show of 50 pieces of Haitian art, opens in New York on Friday
In the immediate aftermath of earthquake, @placeholder and other art collectors in Haiti rescued thousands of pieces from the rubble that might have been forever lost.