MUNCH’S SCREAM MAY BE BEYOND REPAIR

Damage resulting from the theft of Edvard Munch’s Scream may be too severe to be repaired, according to a two-hundred-page assessment that was to be turned over yesterday to the police in Oslo, reports the New York Times‘ Lawrence Van Gelder. The Scream and another Munch masterwork, Madonna, were recovered by police in August, two years after they were stolen from the city-owned Munch Museum in Oslo by masked gunmen in a daylight robbery on August 22, 2004. Discussing The Scream, Ingebjorg Ydstie, a museum curator, said: “Water has been absorbed by one corner of the paperboard, and there is abrasion damage on the lower part of the painting. We have a large swath that is very visible.”