UPDATE

Edvard Munch‘s “The Scream” was bought by a museum—maybe an American museum, maybe even the Museum of Modern Art.Anyway we read the owner will soon be made Public, owner should be American.

There is also a  rumour on the art market that the Qatari Royal Family had already set aside a larfe sum of money to spend on the painting, that was a worrying development for rival bidders.

It should be remembered that with their purchase of Cézanne’s Les joueurs de carte for $250 million last year the Qatari Royal Family became the “biggest buyer on the world’s art market”.

A virtual who’s who of Wall Street has been filing in and out of Sotheby’s in the past few weeks, taking a closer look at one of the most iconic paintings in art history, including Lightyear Capital CEO Donald Marron, president emeritus of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “It’s a defining picture for a collector, or museum,” says Marron. “The buyer will be someone who wants it for a purpose. The most logical would be a new museum that could use the painting as a draw.”

Marron thinks private collectors will steer clear. “Most collectors like to remain anonymous,” he says. “Buy a painting like ‘The Scream’ and you automatically have to live with the notoriety and publicity.” Marron has talked to several friends who are “capable of buying it outright, today,” he says. “Whether they want to is another question.”

One financier and art collector who could be the new surprise owner is SAC Capital CEO Steven A. Cohen. The owner of an estimated half a billion dollars worth of art, Cohen set a record for a Munch work in 1999, when he bought the artist’s “Madonna” for $11.5 million. Sources close to Sotheby’s say the house recently arranged a private viewing of “The Scream” for Cohen before it went on the block.

One of the art world’s most recognizable images Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” sold Wednesday 2nd of May 2012 for a record $119,922,500 at auction in New York City.The 1895 artwork a modern symbol of human anxiety.

The seller, Petter Olsen, is a Norwegian industrialist whose father, Thomas, was a patron of Munch’s. He has owned the painting for the past 70 years.Petter Olsen inherited “The Scream” after a legal wrangle with his brother Fred over his mother’s inheritance, which was settled in court in 2001, and the two are still not on speaking terms. (Fred Olsen’s own Munch works were sold by Sotheby’s in London in 2006, fetching almost £17m.) In addition to the paintings, Petter has inherited his father’s passion for disseminating the artist’s work more widely.

He has bought Munch’s property in Hvitsten, next to his own family’s property, and plans to turn it into a museum dedicated to the artist, financed from the sale of “The Scream”. “We will be part of the Munch 150th anniversary celebrations next year, with an exhibition on the Oslo university auditorium decorations that he created there at Ramme.”

“The Scream” will be on the block at Sotheby’s on May 2, the highlight of the Impressionist and modern evening sale in New York. Sotheby’s experts anticipate the work will fetch more than $80 million, the highest presale figure the auction house has ever set.

The androgynous wraith grasping its cheeks in dread along an Oslo fiord, created by the Norwegian artist in 1895, is an unpredictable trophy with little precedent, famous as much for the pop-culture spinoffs and parodies it has generated as it is for its artistry.

One of four versions of “The Scream” that Munch created, this is the only one not in an Oslo museum and the first to ever come up at auction. Sotheby’s is betting big on the work: The auction house could either take credit for selling one of the most expensive artworks ever at auction, or risk embarrassment if its expectations prove too high.
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