Sir Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, have loaned three images of
Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe to the Victoria and Albert musum (V&A), for its forthcoming exhibition Fragile Beauty . The photographs include one by
American photographer Bert Stern from his shoots for
Vogue, titled “The Last Sitting”, which showed Monroe lost in thought just two months before she died aged 36, in 1962. John, who wrote one of his most famous songs, “Candle in the Wind”, as a tribute to Monroe, also contributed two other images to Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection. One of them is one of late photographer Richard Avedon’s most memorable shots, showing Monroe looking distant with her eyes lowered, shoulders slumped and one eyebrow gently arched. She appears lost in thought, perhaps tired, and far from the beaming blonde bombshell she was frequently depicted as. The picture was one of several taken on 6 May 1957, when a then-30-year-old Monroe was promoting her new romantic
comedy, The Prince and the Showgirl, in which she starred opposite Laurence Olivier . At the time, the trials and tribulations of her personal life belied the global fame she had achieved with box-office hits including Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1953) and The Seven Year Itch (1955). By this point, her short-lived marriage to
baseball star Joe DiMaggio had collapsed and she was one year into her third marriage, with playwright Arthur Miller. Finally, John’s contribution features Eve Arnold's portrait of Monroe rehearsing her lines on the set of her final film, 1961's The Misfits with Clark Gable, who died before its release. The photographs are being “presented together to the public for the first time”, the V&A said, and is the museum's “largest temporary exhibition of photography to date”. Through “eight thematic sections, Fragile Beauty will explore themes such as
fashion, reportage, celebrity, the male body, and American photography”. Among the historical events featured are the Civil Rights movement of the Sixties, Aids campaigning in the 1980s, and the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in
New York. The exhibition will show more than 300 rare prints from 140 photographers, all of which were selected from John and Furnish’s collection of more than 7,000 images for the museum in South Kensington,
London. It comes after 2016’s Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection, which showcased photographs ranging from the 1920s to the 1950s at Tate Modern in London. Alongside Monroe, portraits of stars such as soul legend
Aretha Franklin, Hollywood
Actor Dame Elizabeth Taylor, The Beatles, and jazz artist Chet Baker will also be on display. Many of them will be available for public viewing for the first time, the V&A said, and are “intensely personal” for John and Furnish, who keep the photographs at their private residences. As part of the exhibition’s study of masculinity, there are photos by Robert Mapplethorpe (a self-portrait showing the late artist wearing horns), and shots from
British director and artist Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Crying Men series, which shows Hollywood stars such as
James Bond actor Daniel Craig, Robin Williams and Laurence Fishburne in tears. A portrait of transgender
Actress Candy Darling in her hospital bed by Peter Hujar, and Tom Bianchi's pictures of men enjoying resorts when same-sex sexual activity was illegal in parts of the US in the 1970s and 1980s, are also being shown. New details of the exhibition were announced as John celebrates his 77th birthday (25 March). Fragile Beauty: Photographs From The Sir Elton John And David Furnish Collection opens on 18 May 2024 and runs until 5 January 2025. Additional reporting by Press Association