On Sunday, at around 9:30 a.m., robbers broke into the Parisian museum‘s Apollo Gallery using a cherry picker and an angle grinder to steal nine pieces of jewelry worth an estimated $102 million in less than eight minutes. Could the heist have been prevented? ARTnews contacted experts to find out.

Most agreed that the theft could have happened anywhere. James Ratcliffe, director of recoveries and general counsel at the Art Loss Register, called the heist “a case of working out where there is an opportunity and taking advantage of it. I would be surprised if they hadn’t thought about other museums. We know that other French museums have been targeted.”

He was likely referring to the Natural History Museum in Paris, which was robbed just one month prior to the Louvre theft. A woman has since...