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UK Portrait Gallery Launches Marilyn Monroe Centenary Exhibition

6/6/2026

Summary

Marilyn Monroe Centenary Exhibition

The National Portrait Gallery in the United Kingdom opened “Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait” to mark her centenary.
The exhibition displays Monroe’s 1940 photo-booth self-portrait as Norma Jeane alongside later iconic images.
A late George Barris portrait from Santa Monica beach shows a tired Monroe.
The show also includes a paparazzi photo of Monroe’s body bag from August 1962, which Peter Blake used in his 1988 collage “Norma Jean Baker.”

Summary

Marilyn Monroe Exhibition

The gallery exhibition portrays Marilyn Monroe as the creator of her own image, emphasizing her camera control.
Curators include Halsman's solarisation, Dalí's surreal collages, de Dienes's annotated prints, and display Salvatore Ferragamo shoes to highlight her consumer habits while flagging the $50 nude later reproduced by Playboy without her consent.
More than 200 works, ordered chronologically from Warhol’s repeated icon to Dumas’s morgue portrait, allow contradictory portrayals and reject a single narrative.

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Marilyn Monroe Centenary Exhibition

The National Portrait Gallery in the United Kingdom opened “Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait” to mark her centenary.
The exhibition displays Monroe’s 1940 photo-booth self-portrait as Norma Jeane alongside later iconic images.
A late George Barris portrait from Santa Monica beach shows a tired Monroe.
The show also includes a paparazzi photo of Monroe’s body bag from August 1962, which Peter Blake used in his 1988 collage “Norma Jean Baker.”

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