Anonymous Guest asked: does the fact i get slightly tilted when people i agree with damage historical artifacts say something about me (student of art history, even if the courses are biased towards Western Europe), when most of the artifacts the people i agree with are paintings and statues representing horrible people (lord balfour, christopher columbus, every slave trader ever), or as some sort of slam against a particular museum curator's harassment of women like what happened fairly recently with "l'origine du monde"? even though defacement of art has always been a political act, why does it make me so sad and angry? why do i care so much about art when the people suffer?
Just to make clear at the outset, I'm neither a an art scholar nor a psychologist. Whatever I have to say to this is backed up only by my own hubris, and nothing more. With that out of the way, I'd be happy to take a stab at this.