Norway’s Munch Museum throws open its newly reinforced doors to the public this month, but two of the country’s most valuable and world’s most recognisable artworks remain notably missing from the revered artist’s hometown shrine.
On 22 August 2004, armed robbers descended on the gallery and made off with one of four versions of expressionist painter Edvard Munch’s iconic depiction of mankind’s horror and descent into madness, The Scream (top), together with the emotionally charged The Madonna (bottom left).
The heist may enjoy great magnitude but it’s ironically this very fact which invokes such optimism for its safe return among authorities. These painting are instantly recognisable and are impossible to sell on, insists Interpol.
But a brief glance at art theft history delves into a rather murkier underworld of terrorists, mob figures and ex cons who have the knack of making a familiar piece vanish into thin air (and besides which, no law requires art dealers to research whether a work presented to them is stolen before putting it up for sale).
Art thieves defy the Interpol profiler. Some of the most important artworks in the world have been stolen with intent to be held at ransom, for political reasons, or simply because the art lover turned thief fancied hanging it on his wall.
Any of the above may be at the bottom of one of the greatest cultural crimes of the century, a 15-year-old robbery which makes the Munch hold-up look as simple as painting-by-numbers.
In 1990, two men wearing what appeared to be police uniforms knocked on the door of Boston’s small but significant Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and demanded entrance to the fifteenth century Venetian-style palace’s inner courtyard, where, according to the security guards’ story, they were to 'investigate a suspicious noise'.
Eighty-one minutes later, the guards lay gagged and handcuffed in the basement, while the unarmed robbers – having whipped out CCTV tapes - perused the 2,500 works of art covering 30 centuries, and cherry picked 13 pieces, including three works by Rembrandt, five by Degas and a twelfth century bronze beaker.
The heist was valued at $300 million, despite including several insignificant works thought to have been taken as a tongue-in-cheek gesture of victory.
No single piece has been recovered, nor a suspect arrested, despite a $5 million reward attracting attention from renowned genius IQ level art thieves claiming to have information, and theories surrounding the IRA as a likely candidate given their propensity towards art theft as a means of raising money for weapons or leverage to get one of their own out of jail.
Due to the gallery founders’ will and testament, frames which once bordered masterpieces by Rembrandt continue to adorn the walls. Only now they’re empty.
The biggest booty in art history may, along with Munch's masterpiece, have evaded capture, but that doesn’t mean there’s no hope for a safe return. The recovery rate for the
£3 billion worth of art and antiques stolen every year is around 20% - but items have been known to take more than 30 years to surface.
Incidentally, there’s nothing like a grand-scale theft to cement a painting’s masterpiece credentials. When the Mona Lisa went missing from the Louvre in 1911, the French public queued in their thousands to see the blank space on the wall.
1911: Leonardo De Vinci’s masterpiece, Mona Lisa, walks out of the Louvre in Paris under an Italian workman’s smock. The thief – caught 27 months later – was annoyed that Italian works were in the French collection.
2003: Thieves posing as tourists overpower a lone guide and make off with Leonardo De Vinci’s Madonna With The Yarnwinder from the Duke of Buccleuch’s Scottish home. The piece - valued at between £35 and £50 million - is still missing.
2003: Pablo Picasso’s Nature Morte A La Charlotte - worth £1 million - is reported missing from a restoration studio in Paris’ Pompidou Centre.
2003: Thieves in Manchester evade CCTV cameras, alarms and 24-hour patrols to steal paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso and Gaugain worth an estimated £4 million. The loot was uncovered the following day in a public loo along with a note from the thieves claiming that their motive had been highlighting poor security.
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Munch’s vision of horror still evades the art detectives, but history is on their side.
In 1994 thieves used wire cutters to lift a version of The Scream from The National Art Museum in Oslo. They left a note reading 'Thanks for the poor security!' A radical anti-abortion group claimed responsibility, but authorities dismissed the statement, as they did a later £700,000 ransom demand from an unnamed source.
Nevertheless, the work was eventually recovered during a raid in a seaside town outside Oslo where Munch painted some of this most famous works. Four men have been convicted.
Other versions of what art historians have termed 'the first expressionist painting' will be on display from June 2005 at the Munch Museum in Oslo.
The Royal Academy of Arts in London hosts a Munch exhibition from 17 September to 15 December 2005.
Please note that Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third party sites. Images copyright of Munch Museum/Munch Ellingsen Group 2005.
