MARILYN AT 100: LOST & FOUND

An online exhibition exploring the myth, image, and inner life of Marilyn Monroe

To mark the centenary of Marilyn Monroe’s birth, Marilyn at 100: Lost & Found presents a powerful online exhibition (with rare signed prints available at the gallery to view and purchase) examining Monroe not simply as Hollywood’s most enduring icon, but as a creator, performer, and artist who carefully constructed — and continually redefined — her own image.

Bringing together extraordinary works by some of the twentieth century’s most celebrated photographers — including Allan Grant, Eve Arnold, André de Dienes, Elliott Erwitt, Burt Glinn, Ernst Haas, and Larry Schiller — the exhibition reveals the many dimensions of a woman too often obscured by celebrity mythology.

Coinciding with the landmark exhibition Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait at the National Portrait Gallery, this online presentation traces Monroe’s evolution through glamour portraits, intimate candid studies, and rarely seen behind-the-scenes photographs from the filming of The Misfits. Together, these images chart the tension between public spectacle and private self, capturing Monroe in moments of radiance, intelligence, humour, solitude, and vulnerability.

A particular highlight of the exhibition is a rare group of vintage photographs by Allan Grant, which have never been exhibited before, which were created for LIFE magazine only days before Monroe’s death in August 1962. Published as part of the magazine’s now legendary “Last Interview,” the story offered only a fleeting glimpse into Monroe’s final reflections. The majority of the photographs — alongside hours of recorded conversation — remained unseen and unheard for decades. This coincides also with the first publication of these images in book form, Marilyn Monroe: The Last Photographs, The Lost Interview is Marilyn Monroe in her own words.

Marilyn at 100: Lost & Found brings together a remarkable selection of these rediscovered images, alongside some of the other more iconic portraits by Arnold and Erwitt, revealing a Marilyn Monroe far removed from the carefully manufactured persona: candid, thoughtful, disarming, and profoundly human.