by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
“Marilyn Monroe was a legend. In her own lifetime she created a myth of what a poor girl from a deprived background could attain. For the entire world she became a symbol of the eternal feminine.”
That’s an excerpt from acting coach and director Lee Strasberg’s eulogy at Monroe’s funeral. The actress and celebrity has been dead since 1962, but the effect she had on popular culture lives on to this day.
That influence is at the heart of the new exhibit that opens to the public at the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville Friday, “Life as a Legend: Marilyn Monroe.” With 308 photographs, paintings, sculptures and mixed-media pieces it’s the largest exhibit in the museum’s history and includes works by Richard Avedon, Peter Blake, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Allen Jones, Bert Stern and Andy Warhol, among many others.
The exhibit traces America’s most famous sex symbol’s life from the time Monroe was an unknown trying to break into the Hollywood film scene through the impact she has had on artists all over the world.
“The thing that most interests me about this exhibit,” said Ben Thompson, MOCA associate curator and registrar, “Is that you expect to see fashion photography and glamor shots and Hollywood stills of Monroe, but this show also exhibits artists’ reactions to her iconic status in our society and what she represents in terms of our perception of beauty.”
Thompson also said two other offerings related to the exhibit, a musical that will be presented in the MOCA Theatre and a film series at the Main Library, create a “true multimedia experience, which is appropriate for the subject.”
Sunny Thompson will perform her award-winning one-woman show, “Marilyn Monroe: Forever Blonde,” Thursday-Saturday evenings from Feb. 11-March 14. The show celebrates Monroe’s rise to stardom as well as her views on sex and the men in her life through 17 songs she performed in films.
Three of Monroe’s movies, “Clash by Night,” “Some Like it Hot,” and “The Misfits,” will be shown at the Main Library Jan. 27- Feb. 24.
Other events complementing the exhibit are a special evening Feb. 20 at Cafe Nola, “Marilyn Monroe Dinner in Drag: Celebrating Marilyn with the GLBT Community,” and the MOCA Arts Council’s “Mad About Marilyn: A Soiree at MOCA” March 13.
The exhibit will debut with a private viewing for the museum’s Avante Garde Patrons tomorrow evening at 6 p.m. followed by a preview for MOCA members at 7 p.m.
For details, membership information and ticket prices call 366-6911.
The exhibit includes a wide selection of pop art depicting Monroe’s image.
Sunny Thompson will present her one-woman musical, “Marilyn Monroe: Forever Blonde,” in the MOCA Theatre Feb. 11-March 7.
356-2466