The Hat Sitting; Image supplied.
Last month the oversized, eight-metre tall public sculpture Forever Marilyn was raised in Rosalind Park, Bendigo. On its first trip outside the United States, the icon’s elegant form will overlook the town for the duration of the Marilyn Monroe exhibition, now on at Bendigo Art Gallery.
Tansy Curtin, Senior Curator at Bendigo Gallery, recalls first seeing the enormous sculpture in Chicago in 2011 while on a family holiday.
‘I wasn’t working on the Marilyn show at the time, so it registered but not hugely. I saw that people were loving it, taking selfies and all that sort of thing. Then when I started on the Monroe exhibition I remembered back to that experience and half-jokingly said to my director, ‘What do you think? Can we bring this really large sculpture of Marilyn to Bendigo?’
With the help of booms, cranes and the installation team from the United States, Marilyn arrived safe and sound in Bendigo. ‘When you are working on something of this scale, you never quite think it is going to be real. And when you see the sculpture arrive and you see her in parts, her legs there, and the skirt over there, and her head somewhere else – it’s an incredible experience,’ said Curtin.
Forever Marilyn by Seward Johnson ©1996, 2011 The Seward Johnson Atelier, Inc. Based on the Photo by Bernard of Hollywood.Photo: Jim Marshall.
‘As soon as it went up, people have been really engaging with it and loving the sculpture and have taken it in the spirit that was intended – as a really iconic piece in central Bendigo to get people to think about the exhibition, but also as a wonderful drawcard for the city itself.’
Marilyn Monroe has fascinated people all over the world as one of the most iconic figures of the twentieth century. The exhibition has been developed in collaboration with Twentieth Century Fox who has provided Bendigo Art Gallery with unprecedented access to an archive containing never-before-seen correspondence between Monroe and Fox, wardrobe test photographs, and studio portraits.
The exhibition will be the most comprehensive survey of Marilyn Monroe’s life ever presented, including many of her personal items, clothing, original photographs, and more than twenty original film costumes.
The exhibition is unique in how it unpacks the real person behind the iconic image. Delving beyond career highlights, recognisable images and popular films, Marilyn’s personality, values and commitment to her work and career shines through. ‘I really wanted Marilyn’s voice to come through the exhibition,’ said Curtin.
‘People think they know a lot, but in fact there is a lot of myth and storytelling around her. It’s quite difficult to separate them and to find out what the truth behind Marilyn is – what was actually made up by her or by others around her.
‘That’s one of the reasons that we have included a lot of her personal clothing, and also artefacts and ephemera belonging to her, to help try to uncover some of that truth and to unpack Norma Jeane/Marilyn and find out who she was.’
Excerpts, not only from her films and life in show business, but from interviews and newsreel footage will show alongside the intimate collection of Marilyn’s belongings and the newly available archive provided by Fox.
‘This gives Marilyn a very strong voice in the exhibition. We get to see her still in front of cameras, but not actually playing the role of a character in a film. So there’s this authenticity in the voice that we hear of Marilyn. I think that really helps elucidate her life more,’ said Curtin.
It is one thing to recognise the white dress from Seven Year Itch, but another thing entirely to see the personal wardrobe Marilyn chose for herself. For Curtin the opportunity to discover more about her private life sheds light on the real Marilyn.
‘All those really ostentatious gowns we see her in, the gold lamé, the sparkling showgirl costumes, that’s what Twentieth Century Fox and other studios dressed her in. But then what she wore in her private life was actually very austere and subdued in a way.
‘They are, in lots of ways, more conservative than the costumes she was put in on stage. That’s what is really interesting, the complete dichotomy between the public Marilyn and the private Marilyn,’ said Curtin.
Image: supplied.
The exhibition is set to be an event for the town of Bendigo, similar in many ways to the incredibly successful Grace Kelly exhibition in 2012, which proved there is great audience interest in costume, fashion and iconic women of the twentieth century.
‘We have found a niche for ourselves looking at costume and fashion and contextualising that in world history. It’s also a case where we know there is an intense interest in famous women, women who really have put an indelible stamp on history, and there’s that idea of looking at these women and looking at the roles they have played.’
Visitors from out of town will have the opportunity to experience the city’s arts, heritage, food and wine culture with a series of accommodation packages and tailored local tours and experiences that tie in with the exhibition, such as a cocktail-party tram ride through the city that explores the friendship between Marilyn Monroe and Jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald.
‘Many of our businesses are celebrating Marilyn during this period, so we encourage you to make it a weekend with Marilyn and explore our region,’ said Bendigo Tourism Marketing Manager Glenn Harvey.
Bendigo Art Gallery and Twentieth Century Fox present Marilyn Monroe
5 March – 10 July 2016
Visit www.bendigoartgallery.com.au for more information and to purchase tickets.
To find out more about the accommodation packages and experiences on offer, visit http://www.bendigotourism.com/things-to-do/marilyn-official-packages-and-experiences
