We are delighted to announce that the 2022 Icon Annual Lecture will be delivered online by Sarah Scaturro, the Eric and Jane Nord Chief Conservator at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Through the lecture, Sarah will delve into the controversy surrounding Kim Kardashian and the Marilyn Monroe dress; the media furore that followed and the ways in which conservation practice was thrust into the limelight.
Abstract
On the first Monday in May of this year, Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress on the red carpet for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual gala. Social media erupted, with some people expressing anger and shock that the dress was allowed to be worn, while others simply shrugged their shoulders stating, “Who cares, it’s just a dress. Isn’t clothing meant to be worn?” Fashion conservation went viral, with even a late-night comedy host joking that now everyone was an expert about it.
Out of this chaos came the voices of conservators, curators, scholars, and even the designer of Monroe’s dress stating that to put an iconic and historic garment onto a human body was problematic.
The story stayed in headlines for weeks as photographic evidence emerged that the dress actually had been damaged.
ICOM-Costume issued a stern warning, stating that “Historic garments should not be worn by anybody, public or private figures.” That condemnation reflected a stance that the group of primarily curators and historians had held for 40 years.
Yet, while #fashionconservation trended, lost in this public discussion was a consideration of how conservation thinking has evolved beyond absolute prohibitions towards people-centred approaches that may facilitate the wearing of historic garments in some contexts.
This lecture uses this case study to explore how conservation issues can go viral and how conservators can engage these opportunities to communicate compellingly and with nuance the varied nature of conservation.
Speaker
Sarah Scaturro
