Man arrested in connection with Bristol artifacts theft

A 41-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the theft of more than 600 artifacts from a facility housing items from Bristol Museum's British Empire and Commonwealth collection, police said.

Avon and Somerset Police arrested the man last month on suspicion of handling stolen goods, officials said in a January 29 statement. He was released under investigation.

“As part of our investigation, we are continuing to identify four people we wished to speak with,” police said in the statement. “We continue to appeal for the public’s help to identify the four men.”

Urgent Matter has reached out to Avon and Somerset Police for more information and updates in the investigation.

A group of four men is believed to have broken into a building that housed items from the museum’s collection between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. on September 25, weeks before Napoleonic jewels were stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris—sparking attention globally to museum security and theft recovery efforts.

But the Bristol theft was not revealed until December when police released images from closed-circuit television of the four suspects they seek to identify.

Items taken in the burglary include jewelry, military medals and badges, natural history materials, and decorative objects including carved ivory, silver items and bronze figurines, the Bristol City Council said in a statement.

Police have said they delayed announcing the theft in order to fully audit what was taken from the museum collection. The delay drew criticism from art crime specialists.

"Why did we wait so long to bring it to the public's attention? By doing that it makes it easier for criminals to sell what they've stolen,” Chris Marinello, the chief executive of Art Recovery International, previously told the BBC.

“Normally, it's not very easy when the press is all over a story. The more people that know about it, the harder it is to sell these types of things to respectable dealers. There comes a time when you need to publicize these thefts.”

Bill Anderson, the co-founder of the art security firm Art Guard, recently told Urgent Matter that he worries that violent, forceful intrusions will become more frequent in Europe.

It was not immediately clear if any of the artifacts have been recovered.

Follow along with other art crime stories at Urgent Matter’s art crime tracker.