The Scream was stolen from the Munch Museum in 2004.
On 22 August 2004, masked gunmen entered Oslo’s Munch Museum in daylight and stole the museum’s 1910 painted version of The Scream. They also took Munch’s Madonna. A bystander photographed the robbers as they escaped, but the paintings remained missing for two years and rumors circulated that the thieves might have destroyed them.
Norwegian police announced on 31 August 2006 that both paintings had been recovered. The works were in better condition than feared, although The Scream had moisture damage in its lower-left corner. The Munch Museum displayed the recovered paintings in September 2006, and conservation work was later presented in the exhibition “Scream and Madonna—Revisited,” which opened in 2008.
The 2004 theft is distinct from the 1994 theft of the 1893 painted version from Oslo’s National Gallery. Because Munch made multiple versions, references to “the stolen Scream” can mean different works. The 1994 National Gallery version was recovered within months; the Munch Museum version took two years to locate.