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# Edvard Munch's The Scream Is a New Yorker
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/edvard-munchs-the-scream-is-a-new-yorker/
- Published: 2012-07-11T21:55:51.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:45:59.000Z
- Description: We now know who owns Edvard Munch's 1895 pastel version "The Scream" that fetched $119.9m at auction earlier this year — New York financier Leon Black.
- Author: Hrag Vartanian
- Tags: Opinion, Edvard Munch, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:51 (2012, 2013, part 1)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2012/07/scream-leon-black-620.jpg "scream-leon-black-620")

Oh, Kelly Crow of [*WSJ*](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304373804577521240470769420.html?mod=djemalertNEWS&ref=hyperallergic.com), you got yourself a juicy art market scoop. We now know who owns Edvard Munch’s 1895 pastel version “The Scream” that fetched [$119.9m](http://hyperallergic.tumblr.com/post/22289533652/holy-shit-119-9-million-hiredgoons?ref=hyperallergic.com) at auction earlier this year — New York financier Leon Black:

> Now that the buyer has been identified, the new parlor game surrounding the iconic artwork will be guessing where it will end up. Mr. Black’s long-term intentions for his Munch remain unclear. He sits on the boards of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, setting up a potential tug of war between two of the country’s most powerful art institutions. Neither owns a “Scream,” aside from lithograph-print versions of it.

I love this part:

> A spokesman for Mr. Black, 60 years old, declined to comment.