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Forever Marilyn—that 26-feet tall, stainless steel statue of Marilyn Monroe from The Seven Year Itch—may be returning to Palm Springs in September, reports The Desert Sun.
The statue had graced Palm Springs in the past. Thanks to a loan from the Sculpture Foundation, which owns the statue, Forever Marilyn stood in downtown Palm Springs from 2012 to 2014. Now, the city wants to bring Marilyn back as it ramps up its plans to revitalize its downtown.
PS Resorts—a local non-profit that aims to boost tourism to the city—is largely behind the initiative to secure the statue. The organization says that it will foot the bill to make it happen; half of the money will come from an agreement with a liquer company, and the other half will come through private fundraising. The current proposal is for the statue to be installed outside the Spa Resort Casino. Aftab Dada, chair of PS Resorts, told the Palm Springs City Council on Wednesday night that the plan is to have the statue at the end of September.
"I think that will be a great publicity and bring a lot of people from other cities into our downtown, and will tremendously help all our merchants, because she is a magnet, and great traffic driver," said Dada.
Forever Marilyn was constructed in 2011 by sculptor Seward Johnson, who has a knack for turning American iconography into giant-sized replications. The statue is often mocked by art critics and casual onlookers; VirtualTourist named it as one of the worst pieces of public art in America. But a lot of people also like taking pictures with it. As such, the statue has been shipped around to different cities to catch the gaze of curious onlookers. It had spent a year on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, and it was last spotted in the Australian city of Bendigo. Forever Marilyn is now heading back to its hometown of Jersey, and, if all things go according to plan, it'll be coming to Palm Springs in the fall.
Anyway, here are some images of the statue at its last stop in Australia:
