ABOVE: Detail from Munch’s The Scream, and the thing it’s screaming at: the Norwegian board game The Mystery of The Scream.

Some people just can’t stand to have fun. The Munch Museum in Norway has pulled from its shelves a board game based on the 2004 theft of The Scream from the museum itself in Oslo. People thought that it was more than a little tasteless for the very museum from which the masterpiece was stolen to be selling an entertaining board game based on that theft. It “helps trivialize a national and international drama while the painting is still missing,” sniffed one party pooper.

The Mystery of the Scream itself is just a cat-and-mouse match between players acting as cops and robbers, with the loot in question being The Scream. The Norwegian publisher of the game, Aschehoug, says that the game is educational, as it includes easily digestible factoids about art as players progress through the game. Now, that sounds a little too educational to be entertaining, but we’ll never know because the Munch Museum and the Norwegian people refuse to take a little perspective on a theft that can be called at worst unfortunate. Let the kids play.

LINK: CBC > IN BRIEF: Art theft board game pulled…