Go on, fall off a mule

is there a style uglier than central european baroque. genuinely. perhaps french baroque?

french people in the 19th century saw a beautiful church and thought “you know what this needs. the biggest, ugliest mass-produced statue of the sacred heart of christ. hell yeah”

obviously museums, archeology, anthropology, the concept of conservation, everything etc are completely undetachable from imperialism at the core but i feel like people have this idea of straightforward theft and very much underestimate the amount of artifacts that left their original site purely because "holy shit these people really are paying money for this old crap". obviously in many cases the theft is there regardless of whether there was a transaction or agreement because of the Broader Dynamics at play... but also like some rules don't work in EVERY case lol