It's a Scream

October 27, 2005 5:22 AM

Mystery of the Scream. In August 2004, two armed and masked robbers pulled off a stunning daylight robbery when they entered the Edvard Munch museum in Oslo and pulled The Scream and Madonna off the walls in front of stunned visitors and carried them out of the museum. Although suspects have been identified, no charges have been filed, no arrests have been made, and the paintings remain missing. Last week, the museum gift shop began selling a children's board game called Mystery of the Scream where players assume the roles of art thief and police. Not everyone was amused. Kaare Berntsen, artistic director of Oslo's Kaare Berntsen Gallery, said "In principle I find it a bit in bad taste to make a game out of the theft of The Scream." Yesterday, bowing to pressure from the Norweigan government, the museum pulled the game from the shelves.
posted by three blind mice (15 comments total)

"Police in Norway have charged six men with involvement in the Munch theft, but none has gone to trial."

From the "Not everyone was amused" BBC link.
posted by Leon at 5:25 AM on October 27, 2005

Thanks Leon. I stand corrected.
posted by three blind mice at 5:30 AM on October 27, 2005

This guy was shocked to see that this game was for sale, as you can plainly see:


posted by clevershark at 5:38 AM on October 27, 2005

That's idiotic. What's in bad taste about it?
posted by OmieWise at 5:49 AM on October 27, 2005

I wonder what kind of games will be for sale in the Freedom Tower giftshop?
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:02 AM on October 27, 2005

The painting hasn't been found, which I understand is the real problem - it's tempera on cardboard. Ironically, if I understand the case, the version clevershark gave us was not the one stolen. Wikipedia lists it as this copy, which is a little less familiar.

That said, it's a neat-sounding game and why shouldn't the museum profit off the fact that, right now, it's missing its most famous painting?
posted by graymouser at 6:16 AM on October 27, 2005

I don't much care one way or another about the "good taste" issue Making fun of notorious crimes, especially ones where no one was killed seems fine. Kids will be playing "cops and robbers" type games anyways, so having them learn a bit of art history in the process seems alright.

But I think these knuckleheads dropped the ball on keeping a landmark piece of art secure, and really have no business profiting from their failure or making light of it. If a competing museum (if there can be said to be "competition" in the museum field) made the game lampooning the other guys I'd probably be less irritated.

Or maybe if the game has a self-deprecating "what a bunch of screwups these guys at the Munch Museum are" feel to it I'd tolerate it more.
posted by mragreeable at 6:32 AM on October 27, 2005

Bet you some of these games will pop up on eBay and fetch a pretty penny.

Why on earth would anyone steal The Scream? It's so incredibly recognizable no one could even hang it in his or her own home, let alone sell it.
posted by orange swan at 7:21 AM on October 27, 2005

mragreeable, I can think of few museums impervious to armed robbery at gunpoint (and in Norway, armed robbery is quite rare). The fact is that great works of art around the world are in small, poorly secured museums, but most of them don't attract thieves because the works are generally unfenceable. That's good, because most of them don't have the money for what it would take to really secure them.
posted by dhartung at 7:23 AM on October 27, 2005

There is a theory that the Munch thefts were ordered by the mastermind (if you can call him that, - he was caught) to pull police resources off the investigation of an extremely high profile armed robbery (~$8m and the death of a policeman) that occured earlier last year, and that the paintings are hidden away or destroyed, not to be sold.

A lot of the same names figure in both cases (by proxy or directly), but Norway is small..

"I was afraid to become implicated and that my role in the crime would not be believed, and I was worried because the Munch robbery had been linked to the NOKAS (Norwegian Cash Service) robbery"

The NOKAS trial is underway now, and is getting daily press coverage.
posted by flippant at 7:46 AM on October 27, 2005

orange swan writes "Why on earth would anyone steal The Scream? It's so incredibly recognizable no one could even hang it in his or her own home, let alone sell it."

I imagine there are several Howard Hughes types out there with extremely private galleries.

Geez 1 of 1 cars get stolen and squirreled away in private collections, a painting is trivial to hide in comparison.
posted by Mitheral at 8:25 AM on October 27, 2005

When games are outlawed...

Only outlaws will play games about stealing art
posted by Windopaene at 8:49 AM on October 27, 2005

Slightly OT: One strange and interesting aspect of The Scream is that its vivid and lurid colors - often thought to be derived from Munch's imagination - were recently discovered to be the actual colors that Edvard Munch saw in the sky in Oslo after an eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. The eruption in Indonesia threw a cloud of ash into the sky, which caused blood-red sunsets all across Europe for about 3 months. As Munch wrote in one of his diaries (from the Current Science article:

I was walking along the road with two friends--then the Sun set--all at once the sky became blood red--and I felt overcome with melancholy. I stood still and leaned against the railing, dead tired--clouds like blood and tongues of fire hung above the blue-black fjord and the city. My friends went on, and I stood alone, trembling with anxiety. I felt a great unending scream piercing through nature.
posted by purple_frogs at 9:02 AM on October 27, 2005

Famous (and highly recognizable) artwork is rarely stolen for its resale value. Sometimes collectors are interested in having a specific piece for a private collection, but there are other possibilities.

Banks don't always check on the provenance of lesser-known (but still valuable) works that are used as collateral, allowing "clean" loans to come from stolen art. In addition, paintings, prints, and drawings make great (portable) currency for all kinds of illegal trafficking. "I'll give you my stolen van gogh for the right to buy/sell guns/drugs/etc. on your turf."
posted by annaramma at 9:59 AM on October 27, 2005

Gåttabanen!
posted by spazzm at 6:28 AM on October 28, 2005