Marilyn Monroe at 100: Can Exhibitions and Auctions Help Us to Look Beyond the Blonde?

Today, on what would have been Marilyn Monroe’s 100th birthday, the world is reflecting on the star’s enduring influence.

Earlier this week, a retrospective of the actress’s costumes—including those from her principal roles—opened at Hollywood’s Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. On 5 May, Marilyn Monroe 100: The Official Centenary Book, was published in collaboration with her estate.

Later this week a major new exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery, titled Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait, will present works by Marlene Dumas, Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon and others. It will foreground what the museum calls “the woman behind the image” and highlight her influence on a post-war art world.

“Marilyn Monroe remains one of the most recognisable people in modern history: a shorthand for glamour, distilled from the films that she appeared in and the wealth of photographs of her, reinforced by the generations of artists she has inspired,” Victoria Siddall, director of the National Portrait Gallery, said in a statement.

“We are proud to be staging this exhibition celebrating Marilyn in her centenary year, exploring her extraordinary life and influence as well as her enduring legacy.”

The British Film Institute is also hosting a two-month film season celebrating the actress, taking in early titles such as Niagara (1953) and The Seven Year Itch (1955) alongside later work including The Misfits (1961), released just a year before her death. And, last Saturday, a lookalike contest in Palm Springs, near John Seward Johnson II’s 2011 Forever Marilyn statue, attracted more than 1,000 competitors.

In the lead-up to her centenary, the 2020s have also been a significant period for Monroe’s legacy. In the 2022 film Blonde, Ana de Armas performed a deeply fictionalised account of her life.

The same year, headlines were made when Kim Kardashian wore an archive gown—originally donned by Monroe when she sang Happy Birthday to US President John F Kennedy in 1962—to the Met Gala. 

Over the years, the postmodern art world also took note of Monroe’s power. In the 1950s and 1960s, her popularity secured her a place in the work of artists including Richard Hamilton, Pauline Boty and Andy Warhol, all of whom produced portraits of “Marilyn” rgar became anchors for the Pop Art movement. 

Additionally, Monroe’s estate has been the source of many auction sales. Marilyn Monroe, Unfiltered, which is hosted online today by Heritage Auctions, includes examples of the actress’s poems, a Christian Dior wool skirt suit worn on her honeymoon with Joe DiMaggio and a handwritten love letter addressed to her ex-husband Arthur Miller. At the time of writing, the 170-lot sale had attracted bids totalling more than $456,000 USD (£338,500). 

Each of these cultural events speaks to a persistent public appetite for Monroe. However, the actress’s creative interior is still routinely eclipsed by the sensationalised mythology that surrounds her death. The cult surrounding Marilyn borders on obsession—perhaps this centenary will finally help us to see beyond the blonde.