The Theft of The Scream
A masked, daylight robbery of an icon
Image: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
In 2004 armed men walked into the Munch Museum in broad daylight and pulled The Scream and Madonna from the walls in front of visitors. Both were recovered two years later.
On 22 August 2004, before a room of stunned visitors, masked and armed men detached The Scream and Madonna from the gallery wall and carried them out to a waiting car. The brazenness of the daylight robbery — no alarm, no glass, no fixed mountings — exposed how thin museum security could be even for priceless works.
The paintings were recovered by Norwegian police in 2006. The Scream had suffered moisture damage that conservators were only partially able to reverse. The theft prompted a wholesale reassessment of security at institutions holding irreplaceable works, and a broader conversation about the impossibility of insuring the truly priceless.