On 12 February 1994, the opening day of the Lillehammer Winter Olympics, two thieves broke into the National Gallery in Oslo and stole the 1893 painted version of Edvard Munch's The Scream. The work had been moved to a more visible second-story gallery as part of Olympic-related attention, and the thieves left a taunting note about security. The museum refused a ransom demand, and Norwegian police, aided by British police and the Getty Museum, recovered the painting undamaged on 7 May 1994. The heist turned a familiar modern icon into a case study in museum vulnerability, publicity, and the black-market uselessness of instantly recognizable masterpieces.
The theft made The Scream a benchmark example in modern museum-security debates.
Artists involved
