Manifesting Marilyn: The Making of an Icon
About the Exhibition
Manifesting Marilyn: The Making of an Icon is an immersive, multimedia exhibition at Genesis House in New York, opening in honor of what would have been Marilyn Monroe's 100th birthday. Across six environments, the show traces the transformation of Norma Jeane Baker into Marilyn Monroe, framing her rise as the deliberate work of a woman shaping her own destiny rather than an accident of glamour. A full-surround diamond and star motif screen experience in the final rooms evokes the sense of stepping inside her psyche, contained within a bottle of Chanel No. 5. A central display of Monroe's possessions anchors the exhibition, including a tailored suit, a favorite green Pucci top, her beauty equipment, her SAG card, and her address book opened to the page where the names Lee Strasberg and Frank Sinatra appear. Upstairs, the Genesis House library presents more than 400 vintage books matched to titles Monroe owned, down to the edition and year, underscoring a reading life that ranged from Carl Sandburg's six-volume Lincoln biography to Joyce, Dostoyevsky, Camus, and Freud. Genesis House is a public cultural space in New York that combines a library, restaurant, tea pavilion, and rotating art exhibitions alongside the Genesis automotive showroom. The exhibition presents Monroe as a shrewd businesswoman who managed her own image in an industry that often exploited young performers.