Victory Is Not An Option, one of the most significant contemporary art exhibitions of 2019, made headlines not just for its well-hung (from a ceiling) taxidermied horse but for being the target of the UK’s most brazen art heist. In the opening weekend of artist Maurizio Cattelan’s retrospective at Blenheim Palace, a work titled America was stolen. The piece was a fully-functioning, solid gold toilet valued at $6m (£4.8m), which had been plumbed into the historic building. Ever the irreverent, the Italian artist confessed his admiration for the burglars’ audacity and wanted to find out how they had been enjoying it.

Potty humor aside, the theft played well with the themes of the exhibition as it considered gold as an exemplar of power, wealth and capitalism; well-placed topics to contemplate at a UNESCO World Heritage site that was the birthplace of wartime prime minister Winston Churchill.

With strategically placed works of art spread across the Baroque interiors of the palace, Victory Is Not An Option also confronted rising symbols of nationalism across Europe. The flag-bearing arm of Emmanuel Frémiet’s Joan of Arc jutted across a vestibule; a sculpture of Hitler knelt in religious humility while Pope John Paul II was felled by a rock. Most devise of all, however, was the gargantuan Union Jack that was emblazoned across the Great Court—a banner that is still uncomfortably associated with imperial power.

Narrated by the director of Blenheim Art Foundation, Michael Frahm, this episode leaves the audience to consider the signs and signifiers that instruct our understanding of the world while encouraging a comedic irreverence for the institutions that perpetuate them.