Nazi artifact plundering and destruction was a huge loss for everyone. (Same with the firebombing of Dresden, for that matter.) Thankfully, the West also set

Nazi artifact plundering and destruction was a huge loss for everyone. (Same with the firebombing of Dresden, for that matter.) Thankfully, the West also set up the MFAA post-war, and recovered a great deal of material. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monuments,_Fine_Arts,_and_Archives_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monuments,_Fine_Arts,_and_Arch... The theft of a single painting is not the same as looters running rampant with destruction. Nowhere is 100% safe. That is the entire problem with long-term conservation! The best we can do is go for maximum political stability. When I younger, I saw first-hand exactly how much mainland China lost during the Cultural Revolution. Destruction of anything old was the (literal) rule of the day. Again, it was a loss to the history of humanity. What I want to avoid is events like this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/28/mali-timbuktu-library-ancient-manuscripts https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/28/mali-timbuktu-... On a long enough time scale, they become exceedingly common. The one surity of things is that if something is valued by one group, someone else will want to destroy it. The best we can do is ensure that these artefacts are in the most stable locations possible. Over time the particulars will undoubtedly change. But the base answer is the same.