Closure Through Curatorship Four Years After Munch Museum Art Theft

Summary: Repairs as good as they get, after reparations and sentences, give the Munch Museum art theft Aug. 22, 2004, in Oslo, Norway, closure Sept. 26, 2008.

tight security over Munch's "Skrik" ("The Scream"); Saturday, Sep. 30, 2006: Tu (tuey), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons

The Munch Museum art theft Aug. 22, 2004, in Oslo, Norway, achieves closure May 22 to Sept. 26, 2008, with audiences appreciating conservationist abilities behind the exposition Madonna and The Scream Revisited.

A bystander with a camera and police officers on another case become the lucky breaks in a case that bumbles not at all like its perpetrators. The camera captures the like-dressed driver not caught by the museum's grainy, indoor footage of two black-footed, black-garbed, black-gloved, black-hooded, black-masked perpetrators with one .357-Magnum handgun. It divulges the perpetrators' getaway vehicle for two police squad cars 15 minutes later, at 11:35 a.m. Central European Summer Time (9:35 a.m. Coordinated Universal Time).

Another puzzle piece emerges Sept. 24, 2004, with police officers espying the exchange of a bag's bus hideaway for one car trunk, and then another, hideaway.

The getaway car for the Munch Museum 2004 art theft was a black Audi; Munch Museum thieves carrying stolen artwork while another thief opens trunk of getaway vehicle, a black Audi A6; Associated Press handout photo taken Sunday, Aug. 22, 2004, by witness asking not to be identified: Mark Barry, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

The black Audi A6 estate car, despite its fire-gutted interior foamed with thick, white fire extinguisher powder frustrating deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and fingerprints, furnishes people trails. It guides Oslo police to one buyer, one driver, one ideator, one owner and two perpetrators while stakeouts give one month in the paintings' 24-month getaway.

People and physical evidence trails into and out of the Audi hint of harm to Edvard Munch's (Dec. 12, 1863-Jan. 23, 1944) Madonna and The Scream. They indicate otherwise for the bus that perpetrators involve, despite its owner's inclinations against such misuse, as the paintings' hideaway, Aug. 22 to Sept. 24, 2004.

Thomas Nataas, bus owner and professional drag racer, judges the Munch Museum art theft as jeopardizing Madonna, not The Scream, with a coin-sized, 1-inch (2.54-centimeter) hole.

interior view of Oslo Courthouse (Oslo tinghus), where trial of suspected perpetrators of Munch Museum 2004 art theft began Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2006, and rulings were issued Tuesday, May 2, 2006; courthouse interior Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006, 06:19, seven months after May rulings: Don Ramey Logan, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Optimal conservation keeps stolen artworks upright within acid-free wrapping paper in clean, dry, low-traffic darkness at 50 percent humidity and 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21.11 degrees Celsius).

Coverage of District and High Court proceedings respectively from Feb. 14 to May 2, 2006, and Feb. 20 to April 23, 2007, lists two in-bus hideaways. Contemporary newspaper articles mention Madonna and The Scream as maintained together, possibly diagonally or horizontally, within a white plastic trash bag under a mattress or seat. In between they note 20 to 30 officers nudging open a van parked just outside Oslo police headquarters Aug. 31, 2006, "and there the paintings were."

Munch Museum art theft realities occasion irreparable water stains on The Scream's lower left-hand corner's "lower part of the left of the figure" and the walkway.

An exhibition, Gjensen med Skrik og Madonna ("Scream and Madonna Revisited"), which ran from Friday, May 23, to Friday, Sep. 26, 2008, celebrated the stolen paintings' return and presented the restoration process; "Madonna," with worse damages, including a ripped canvas, than "The Scream," underwent further restoration after the exhibition ended; Saturday, Aug. 2, 2008, 01:51:12: Hans Dinkelberg (uitdragerij), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

Exhibitions Sept. 27 to Oct. 1, 2006, and May 23 to Sept. 26, 2008, present Madonna repairable, with loose paint, tears and two holes, and repaired.

Brutal extractions from wall mountings and wooden frames and sodden, soiled exile quicken the deterioration of the more fragile tempera on cardboard painting of The Scream. Jonathan Jones, The Guardian art critic, reveals, "Pigment has dissolved or been washed away" from "A huge watery stain, like a watermark on a tea bag." Salvage techniques, more sophisticated than stress, substitute the two restorations for post-theft, pre-recovery place-holders, the respectively lithographic and pastel renditions of the Munch Scream and Madonna.

Madrid-based estudio Herreros' 14-floor (150.92-foot, 46-meter) Lambda project trades the collection's east Oslo address for the trendy southeast 14 years after the Munch Museum art theft.

The new Munch Museum, designed by Madrid's Juan Herreros, is sited on the waterfront in the Bjørvika neighborhood, next to Oslo's Opera House (Operahuset): Munch Museet (themunchmuseum), via Instagram April 1, 2016

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

tight security over Munch's "Skrik" ("The Scream"); Saturday, Sep. 30, 2006: Tu (tuey), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tight_security_over_Munch's_'Skrik'.jpg;
Tu (tuey), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/21168473@N00/256678705

The getaway car for the Munch Museum 2004 art theft was a black Audi; Munch Museum thieves carrying stolen artwork while another thief opens trunk of getaway vehicle, a black Audi A6; Associated Press handout photo taken Sunday, Aug. 22, 2004, by witness asking not to be identified: Mark Barryy, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/markart/230875315/

interior view of Oslo Courthouse (Oslo tinghus), where trial of suspected perpetrators of Munch Museum 2004 art theft began Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2006, and rulings were issued Tuesday, May 2, 2006; courthouse interior Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006, 06:19, seven months after May rulings: Don Ramey Logan, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oslo_Court_photo_D_Ramey_Logan.jpg

An exhibition, Gjensen med Skrik og Madonna ("Scream and Madonna Revisited"), which ran from Friday, May 23, to Friday, Sep. 26, 2008, celebrated the stolen paintings' return and presented the restoration process; "Madonna," with worse damages, including a ripped canvas, than "The Scream," underwent further restoration after the exhibition ended; Saturday, Aug. 2, 2008, 01:51:12: Hans Dinkelberg (uitdragerij), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/uitdragerij/2862542041/

The new Munch Museum, designed by Madrid's Juan Herreros, is sited on the waterfront in the Bjørvika neighborhood, next to Oslo's Opera House (Operahuset): Munch Museet (themunchmuseum), via Instagram April 1, 2016, @ https://www.instagram.com/p/BDqo-bBxUm1/

For further information:

Fouché, Gwladys; Bowcott, Owen; and Henley, Jon. 23 August 2004. "A Blur of Balaclavas - and The Scream Was Gone Again." The Guardian > World > World News.
Available @ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/aug/23/artsandhumanities.education

Hollington, Kris. 13 June 2005. "Master Plan." The Guardian > U.S. Edition > Arts > Art & Design > Art.
Available @ https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/jun/13/art.arttheft

Jones, Jonathan. 16 February 2007. "The Bigger Picture." The Guardian > US Edition > Arts > Art & Design > Art > Jones on Art.
Available @ https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2007/feb/17/art.arttheft

Marriner, Derdriu. 25 August 2017. "Stavanger Bomb and Theft Four Months Before Munch Museum Art Theft." Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2017/08/stavanger-bomb-and-theft-four-months.html