Everyone in the adult business should be familiar with Edvard Munch’s The Scream. It’s the general reaction when looking at bad porn or listening to the Sports Swami interviewing a new girl in the industry. Aside from all that, it seems like someone got the bright idea of stealing it.

OSLO, Norway — Edvard Munch’s famous paintings “The Scream” and “Madonna” were stolen from an art museum Sunday while stunned museum-goers watched armed men threatening the staff at gunpoint as they took the artworks to a waiting car, police said.

“Two or three armed men threatened an employee with a handgun to give them ‘The Scream’ and ‘Madonna,”’ police spokeswoman Hilde Walsoe told The Associated Press. “No one has been physically injured, and the suspects escaped in an Audi A6. We are searching for the suspects with all available means.” Many museum visitors panicked and thought they were being attacked by terrorists.

“He was wearing a black face mask and something that looked like a gun to force a female security guard down on the floor,” visitor Marketa Cajova told NTB public radio.

A French radio producer, Francois Castang, said he was visiting the Munch Museum in Oslo when thieves burst in and made off with the paintings, including the painter’s depiction of an anguished figure with its head in its hands.

“What’s strange is that in this museum, there weren’t any means of protection for the paintings, no alarm bell,” Castang told France Inter radio.

“The paintings were simply attached by wire to the walls,” he said. “All you had to do is pull on the painting hard for the cord to break loose — which is what I saw one of the thieves doing.”

Castang said police arrived on the scene 15 minutes later. Visitors were ushered into the museum’s cafeteria.

In February 1994, “The Scream” was stolen from the museum and remained missing for nearly three months. Police ultimately recovered the work, which is on fragile paper, undamaged in a hotel in Asgardstrand, about 40 miles south of the capital, Oslo. Three Norwegians were arrested.

At the time, investigators said the trio tried to ransom the painting, demanding US$1 million from the government. it was never paid.

Munch, a Norwegian painter and graphic artist who worked in Germany as well as his home country, developed an emotionally charged style that was of great importance in the birth of the 20th century Expressionist movement.

He painted “The Scream” in 1893, as part of his “Frieze of Life” series, in which sickness, death, anxiety, and love are central themes. He died in 1944 at the age of 81.

The National Art Museum owns 58 paintings by Munch.