The planned erection of a sculpture of American actress Marilyn Monroe, which depicts the infamous moment from Billy Wilder’s 1955 film “The Seven Year Itch” when Monroe’s white skirt is blown up by wind from a sidewalk grate and her underwear gets exposed, on a public site beside the Palm Springs Art Museum in California has been met with widespread opposition.

Activists and art critics primarily from the Palm Springs art and design community gathered on Friday near the museum to voice their disapproval of the installation of the twenty-six feet tall, fifteen tons sculpture by the kitsch king John Seward Johnson II titled "Forever Marilyn".

According to the protesters, the siting of the voluptuous sculpture is offensive as it represents the misogynistic nostalgia of 1950s Hollywood where actresses like Marilyn Monroe were hypersexualized.

For Elizabeth Armstrong, who served as the director of the museum from 2014 to 2018, the statue which exposes Marilyn's derriere is the "opposite of anything the museum stands for.” 

"This artwork is misogyny in the guise of nostalgia,” she said while addressing the rally. "It’s an out-of-date fantasy or delusion of a few men who remember the good old days in Hollywood–those were not good days for women.”

Friday's rally is in response to the city council's approval of the plan to relocate the sculpture from downtown, where it had become a favourite photography scene for tourists who pose between the statue's legs, to the museum perimeter, after it was purchased last year for $1m by a city-funded tourism group called P.S. Resorts who hope the relocation of the statue will bring tourist attention to the art museum.

However, opposition to the planned installation at the museum has been growing bigger with a change.org petition started by the group called Crema (the Committee to Relocate Marilyn) founded by fashion designer Trina Turk and Modernism connoisseur Chris Menrad, which has now garnered over 36,000 signatures.

“As an artwork, this is derivative, tone-deaf, in poor taste and exhibits only the deficit of cultural and art literacy of those involved erecting this monument to misogyny,” commented the Los Angeles artist Nathan Coutts, who further suggested that instead, the sculpture should be moved down the road "with the concrete dinosaurs near Cabazon, where it can exist as the campy roadside attraction it excels at being.”

Another prominent critic of the sculpture erection is the most recent director of the Palm Springs Art Museum, Louis Grachos.

“You come out of the museum and the first thing you're going to see is a 26-foot-tall Marilyn Monroe with her entire backside and underwear exposed," Grachos said in November when the proposal was first approved by the city council. "We serve over 100,000 school-age children that come to our museum every single year. What message does that send to our young people, our visitors and community to present a statue that objectifies women, is sexually charged and disrespectful?"

The public backlash has accumulated into a GoFundMe page set up by the Crema group that has raised over $67,000. This fund is envisaged to help cover legal fees as they seek legal action against the city. Although an injunction to stop the council's plans was refused by a judge, the group have gone on to file an appeal at a higher court.