Thieves steal Rodin sculpture in Denmark
This handout picture grabbed from surveillance camera footage and released by the Copenhagen Police on August 20, 2015 shows two men who are suspected to be the robbers of a bronze bust of French sculptor Auguste Rodin at the Carlsberg Glyptotek. - AFP PHOTO / HO / SCANPIX DENMARK/ KOEBENHAVNS POLITI
COPENHAGEN, Aug 21, 2015 (AFP) - Two robbers have made off with a bronze bust by French sculptor Auguste Rodin from a Copenhagen museum in a bold theft in broad daylight, the museum said Friday.
"So far we have no indications of where it has gone and police investigations are ongoing," a spokesman at the Glyptoteket museum, Jakob Fibiger Andreasen, said.
Andreasen declined to put a price on Rodin’s 1863 "Man with a Broken Nose" but Danish media have estimated its worth at around two million kroner (268,000 euros, $304,000).
The theft occurred on July 16 but the museum has only just announced it.
Surveillance camera footage shows two men taking down the bust from its base, putting it in a plastic bag and then placing it into another bag, before calmly walking out of the museum in broad daylight during normal opening hours.
Another surveillance camera film shows the men had visited the museum over a week earlier, on July 7, to disable the alarm.
"They were inside the museum to reconnoiter about a week prior to the theft," inspector Ove Randrup of Copenhagen police’s robbery and theft unit told daily Politiken.
"Whoever may have taken the statue will have difficulty in moving it, as it has been reported to both Interpol and Europol," Andreasen said.
"They will meet a wall of refusal. But that depends, of course, on which type of market they may choose. It will, however, be difficult for them to offload," he added.
Police have issued descriptions of the two men, saying they were "fair-skinned, of east European appearance," one of whom was wearing a Panama hat and the other a cap.
