Greg Procter, the Brtish Empire would take back treasures from their
overseas colonies and show them off back home to adoring Brits.
Spaniards could see no beauty in the artworks of the natives, so they
simply melted everything down for gold bullion and broke up mosaics.

from the book "Great Conquerors of South and Central America", by A.
Hyatt Verrill, copyright 1929
page 19
Perhaps the most regrettable result of the conquest was the loss to
the world of irreparable records, monuments, buildings, works of art,
handiwork and innumerable other objects pertaining to the American
civilizations destroyed by the Spanish conquerors. Very largely this
wholesale destruction was due to the fanatical zeal of the servants of
the Church who saw, in nearly everything, the symbols of Satan, and
who thought it was their duty to eliminate everything pertaining to
paganism. But vast quantities of the most priceless works of art and
handicraft were lost to the world by being melted down for the sake of
their bullion by the conquerors who saw in them only their intrinsic
value of precious metals.
It is stated by the treasurer and the notary of Pizarro that it
required 60 Incan goldsmiths working steadily day and night for 1
month to reduce the gold and silver objects accumulated at Cajamarca
to bullion, and these were but a small portion of the whole obtained
by the conquerors in Puru. At another place, an immense stone statue
was found and broken up by order of the priests. So huge was this
piece of sculpture that 30 men were employed for 3 days to destroy it.
In Mexico, marvelous mosaics were ripped to pieces for the turquoise
and semiprecious stones of which they were composed; woodwork was
burned to recover the gold nails that were used, and wonderful mantles
and costumes of feathers, and priceless textiles, were reduced to
ashes in order to secure the golden threads of the fabrics.
Human sufferings may be forgotten in time, human lives are replaced
by others; but the products of human minds and hands, the records of
hundreds of generations, the histories of races, the monuments, the
carvings, the architecture and the thousand and one things that tell
the story of countless centuries of a race's development, can never be
duplicated. Once destroyed, they are lost to the world forever.