Why the statue trope keeps working
Awakening statues are ancient as a story device and reliable as a shot because they compress a single idea — the inanimate becoming animate — into one visible event. There is no exposition needed, which is why it survives with no dialogue and under ten seconds. The museum setting adds the second half: a place built specifically for things that are not supposed to move.
Getting a clean break
Leave room around the subject. The shatter is the payoff and it needs somewhere to travel; a statue cropped to the frame edge produces debris that vanishes rather than falls. Even, diffuse source photos also weaken the result — the volumetric lighting in the output has an easier time when the input already has a clear light direction to build on.