Edvard Munch: The Scream
October 24, 2012–April 29, 2013
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues
The Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Painting and Sculpture Galleries, fifth floor
Admission: $25; free with New School student ID

Back in May, one of four versions of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” (1895) sold for a huge amount, $120 million, at a Sotheby’s auction by an anonymous buyer, making the painting the most expensive piece of art ever sold at an auction. The sale makes this particular version of “The Scream” the only one that is privately owned (the other three are in Norwegian museums), and before it gets taken home and out of the public eye, the Museum of Modern Art is presenting “Edvard Munch: The Scream,” on view now until April 2013.

Perhaps just in time for the mood of Halloween, where revelers don masks or fake blood and have fun feeling bouts of anxiety attacks in haunted houses, “The Scream,” an iconic and eerie image of angst and fright, is surely a must-see before the painting goes away into the private realm. Also being presented along with “The Scream” are two paintings, “The Storm” and “Melancholy,” as well as eight of Munch’s woodcuts and lithographs. Among these are the black-and-white lithograph “The Scream” and his renowned “Self-Portrait” and “Madonna,” all from 1895.

-Janet Kim

Photo credit: Edvard Munch. The Scream. Pastel on board. 1895. © 2012 The Munch Museum/The Munch-Ellingsen Group/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York