The National Portrait Gallery in London will open "Marilyn Monroe: a Portrait" next month, accompanied by a book edited by curator Rosie Broadley in association with the Marilyn Monroe estate. The exhibition and book feature works by Andy Warhol, Pauline Boty, Marlene Dumas, James Gill, Rosalyn Drexler, and others, exploring Monroe as a persistent subject in visual art beyond film. Highlights include Warhol's 1962 silkscreen "Green Marilyn", de Kooning's 1954 portrait, and lesser-known works by Joseph Cornell and Alex Margo Arden.
This exhibition matters because it reframes Monroe as a central motif in 20th-century art history, challenging popular biographies that overlook her visual-art legacy. By including women artists like Boty and Drexler alongside canonical Pop figures, the show broadens the narrative around Monroe's cultural impact and highlights how her image has been used to explore themes of fame, sexuality, and mortality. The accompanying book also brings attention to underrecognized artists, such as the British painter Pauline Boty, whose reputation is growing internationally.