The Scream

Oslo. Edvard Munch's most reproduced work. Tempera on cardboard, 1893. One of four versions of The Scream. Taken twice, ten years apart, from two different museums in the same city. First theft: 12 February 1994. The morning of the Lillehammer Olympics opening ceremony. Every camera in Norway is pointed at a small Olympic village three hours north. Two men set a ladder against the National Gallery. Smash a second-floor window. Walk in. Lift The Scream from its hooks. Walk back out. Drive off. Total time: under fifty seconds. They leave a postcard on the gallery floor. Hand-written. "Thanks for the poor security." Recovered three months later by a Scotland Yard officer running a sting from a hotel in Åsgårdstrand. Second theft: 22 August 2004. A different version of the painting, in the Munch Museum on the eastern side of the city. Sunday morning. Visitors inside. Two armed men walk in with handguns visible. Take The Scream. Take Madonna from the next wall. Walk out a fire exit. Drive off in an Audi. Total time: ninety seconds. Recovered two years later, damaged. The restoration team worked on it for two years before it returned to public display. Maren and Ellis on the painting that depicts panic and, in a way nobody quite knows what to do with, generates it.