Chicago to Unveil Giant Marilyn Monroe Statue

Daily Mail: That pose, that dress, those erm, assets...

The 26-foot tall statue towering above tourists in the middle of Chicago could only be one person - Marilyn Monroe. But that hasn't stopped workers, desperate to keep her identity a secret until tomorrow, placing a rather unsightly cloth bag over the poor girl's head, albeit it one in red, white and blue.

The statue, by artist Seward Johnson, replicates the actress's famous subway scene in 1955 film The Seven Year Itch and will be unveiled on Chicago's Pioneer Court today.

In the scene, Monroe stands over a subway grate as a breeze from a train passing below blows her skirt over her panties. It was shot in New York but as the Windy City, Chicago seems like the second best location for such an art work.

It will be on show through the Spring of 2012.

The stainless steel and aluminium sculpture, which weighs a whopping 34,000lbs, has raised more than a few eyebrows. Not least because visitors to the plaza are at once confronted with Monroe's pert bottom in gleaming white panties and her perfect pins bedecked in white, open-toe kitten heels.

Men have been spotted gawping while their wives get cross and attempt to shield their eyes and lots of people have stopped to take a quick snap of the giantess before she goes public tomorrow. Not all are happy of course. Abraham Ritchie wrote on Art Chicago Blog the statue was a 'creepy schlock from a fifth-rate sculptor that blights a first-rate public art collection.'

But the Zeller Realty Group, which owns the plaza and now its statue, wants Marilyn to make people think.
'(Paul Zeller) likes to bring in things that cause a conversation,' said a spokesman from the company. 'They might be controversial, but he likes art that makes people think.'

And if that fails at least her skirt will be a good place to shelter from the rain.