Happy 100th, Marilyn Monroe: Immersive Exhibit Goes Inside the Mind of a Star
Chloë Sevigny was among the excited attendees at the launch of “Manifesting Marilyn: The Making of an Icon” at Genesis House
Marilyn Monroe is instantly recognizable even to those who have never seen her films, over 60 years after her death. In honor of what would have been her 100th birthday, “Manifesting Marilyn: The Making of an Icon” launched at Genesis House in New York on Monday night. The exhibition features six multimedia spaces reflecting different aspects of Monroe. The transformation of Norma Jean Baker into Marilyn Monroe plays out as the planned triumph of a woman piloting her own destiny. The full-surround diamond and star motif screen experience in the final rooms gives an intriguing sense of being inside her psyche as contained in a bottle of Chanel No. 5.
A key display of her possessions is on view, including a tailored suit, a favorite green Pucci top, her beauty equipment, her SAG card, and her address book, open to “S,” where the names Lee Strasberg and Frank Sinatra appear. The page has a telltale, humanizing detail: her penmanship beyond the glamorous swirling signature was far from perfect, and she switches from cursive to print midway through a modification to Sinatra’s address, as if her hand were tired. It’s a detail that is of its era and familiar to the remaining portion of the population that had to learn cursive in school.
Award winning actress Chloë Sevigny was in attendance at the opening event at Genesis House. The invitation said “dress to manifest” and there were echoes of Monroe’s styles on some of the guests: a number of women wore halter-neck sundresses and white in homage to the legend’s famous subway grate image. Ms. Sevigny herself wore white, a short, flouncy one-shouldered number. Other celebrants included actress/model Camille Kostek, Sophie Elgort, Dianne Brill, Maaza Mengiste, Amy Marentic, Young Paris and Eddie Roche.
Off to the side of the Genesis showroom was a photo area where many posed with occasion-made newspaper copies featuring reimagining headlines about Monroe. Hors d’oeuvres were excellently prepared in Genesis House’s kitchen, and the bar offered Piper-Heidsieck Champagne Cuvée Brut along with crafted cocktails.
Guests toasted Marilyn’s statement that she made it because she dreamed the hardest, but there was more to her success than that. She worked, of course. Raised partially in foster homes and an orphanage, Marilyn took her education in hand and read on a level expected of any Seven Sisters graduate of the era. She was often misunderstood: it takes a top-rate mind to play the lightweight as well as she did. She was a shrewd businesswoman who tightly managed her image and picked promoters who moved her career forward, in a town notorious for chewing up and exploiting young beauties.
Not many at the party ventured upstairs, but the the Genesis House library has a treat that rewards intense perusal. Over 400 vintage books matching Monroe’s personal library are on on display for reading in Genesis House’s serene library space. While these are not the actual books that she once owned (several volumes from her real collection are in the show downstairs), the titles all match ones owned by her, down to the copyright and the year. Marilyn often wrote in the margins of her books, proving to future researchers that her library was not for show. She finished all six volumes of Carl Sandberg’s magmum opus on President Abraham Lincoln. Other spines show names like Joyce, Dostoyevsky, Camus, and Freud. There are also tenderly familiar artifacts found now found on the shelves of grandparents, like Howard Fast’s Spartacus and a midcentury edition of The Joy of Cooking.
Genesis House is a destination space where visitors will find a tranquil public oasis with a library, restaurant, tea pavilion and art exhibitions, in addition to a showroom full of Genesis’s luxury vehicles. “Manifesting Marilyn speaks to the courage required to imagine beyond expectation,” Tedros Mengiste, chief operating officer of Genesis Motor North America affirmed, adding, “Marilyn’s story reminds us that icons are shaped through vision, discipline, resilience and the willingness to begin again. At Genesis, and through this latest installation at Genesis House, that ethos of becoming informs how we think about design, culture and hospitality, and how we create experiences that look forward with intention.”
“Manifesting Marilyn: The Making of an Icon” is open to the public at Genesis House through August 2.
