As Marilyn Monroe’s centenary is celebrated this year, London’s cultural stakeholders are converging around her legacy in a way that is both deliberate and overdue. The British Film Institute is dedicating a major summer season to her cinematic work, while the National Portrait Gallery is simultaneously exploring her image through a focused exhibition. Together, they convey a message: Monroe is no longer being presented simply as an icon, but as a figure of intention, construction, and enduring cultural intelligence. Across London, this acknowledgement takes form in two parallel programmes. At BFI Southbank, a June-July season, Marilyn Monroe: Self Made Star, curated by the BFI’s lead programmer Kim Sheehan and opening on 1 June, revisits Monroe’s films with an emphasis on her craft, range, and contribution to cinema. At the National Portrait Gallery, Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait, running from June to September in association with the Marilyn Monroe estate, examines her image, her collaborations, and her role in shaping one of the most enduring visual identities of the twentieth century.
Monroe’s narrative has long been simplified to that of a “blonde bombshell” and a “tragic Hollywood figure,” a portrayal reinforced by early pin-up imagery and a media preference for simplicity. Over decades, this reduction became default truth. The current programmes at the BFI and the National Portrait Gallery move beyond that compression, offering a more complete reading of Monroe. The BFI foregrounds her range and decision-making as a performer, while the National Portrait Gallery highlights her active role in shaping her visibility through close collaboration with photographers and artists, revealing a subject fully aware of how representation operates.
Central to the BFI’s centenary programme is the re-release of The Misfits (1961), Monroe’s final completed film, returning to cinemas across the UK and Ireland on 5 June. Directed by John Huston and written by Arthur Miller, the film presents a quieter, more introspective Monroe, set within a reflective, offbeat Western that explores disillusionment, fractured relationships, and emotional fragility. Around this anchor, the BFI season invites audiences to engage more closely with Monroe’s cinematic output, moving beyond familiar imagery to examine her performance choices, presence, and evolving screen identity. The programme opens with an illustrated panel discussion, where invited speakers reflect on her life, career, and legacy, offering context on how Monroe shaped her star image and sustained her cultural relevance across decades.
Monroe was not just an actress but an image architect, actively collaborating with photographers to create striking, carefully composed images that became cultural touchstones. She demonstrated a clear understanding of visual storytelling – through lighting, expression, and framing – ensuring that her public image was constructed rather than incidental. Operating long before the language of personal branding or narrative ownership became commonplace, Monroe treated visibility as currency and her image as an asset. In doing so, she anticipated the mechanics of today’s media landscape, where identity, projection, and control are central to cultural influence.
The BFI programme extends beyond screenings into a broader examination of Monroe’s legacy. Events such as What Could Have Been: Something’s Got to Give revisit the unfinished final project of her career, drawing on surviving footage to explore alternative narratives around the film that never materialised. Alongside this, a dedicated Marilyn Monroe Study Day brings together talks, panel discussions, and curated screenings to analyse her evolution as a performer, her position within the studio system, and the continued artistic responses to her image. These sessions collectively deepen the conversation, positioning Monroe not only as a film star but as a subject of ongoing cultural and critical interest.
At the National Portrait Gallery, the exhibition assembles works by artists including Andy Warhol, Pauline Boty, Marlene Dumas, James Gill, Rosalyn Drexler, and Audrey Flack, alongside photographs from over twenty key image-makers such as Cecil Beaton, Philippe Halsman, Eve Arnold, Richard Avedon, and Milton Greene. Together, these works trace the construction and circulation of Monroe’s image across art and photography. By foregrounding her collaborative role in these processes, the exhibition underscores her creative agency, presenting her not as a passive subject but as an active participant in the making of her own visual identity. Personal belongings – including books, scripts, and clothing – further contextualise the individual behind the image, adding depth to a figure often defined by surface alone.
The exhibition is curated by Rosie Broadley, Joint Head of Curatorial and Senior Curator of 20th Century Collections, alongside Georgia Atienza, Assistant Curator of Photography. Under their direction, the show positions Monroe not only as a cinematic figure but as one of the most recognisable visual identities of modern history – a lasting shorthand for glamour shaped through film, photography, and artistic reinterpretation. Led by Director Victoria Siddall, the National Portrait Gallery presents the exhibition as both a centenary tribute and a deeper exploration of Monroe’s life, influence, and enduring cultural legacy.
Within these two cultural spaces, Monroe reads differently. Not as a figure built entirely by external forces, but as someone who negotiates within and with those forces, responding to them and, at times, redirecting them. The qualities that may have been overlooked in her own era – strategic thinking, image awareness, and performance control – are precisely the ones that resonate now. Monroe is not being rewritten, but more fully understood. The centenary provides the occasion; the substance has always been present.
Viewed together, these programmes offer a more complete Monroe. Not a fixed symbol, but a constructed and self-aware presence – and a participant in the design of her own legacy.
Programme Information
Marilyn Monroe: Self Made Star – BFI Southbank
June – July 2026, Screenings on sale to BFI Patrons on 5 May, BFI Members on 6 May, and to the general public on 8 May more information
Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait – National Portrait Gallery
4 June – 6 September 2026, Floor 0
£25–27 / £27.50–30 with donation, Free for Members more information
