One hundred years after her birth, Marilyn Monroe is still drawing crowds — and two exhibitions devoted to looking beyond the Hollywood image come to a close today.

Marilyn Monroe has been gone for more than six decades, but 2026 has offered another reminder of just how difficult it is for popular culture to let her go.

Born Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles on June 1, 1926, Monroe would have celebrated her 100th birthday this summer. Instead, a century after her birth, museums on both sides of the Atlantic have spent the year taking another look at the woman behind one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood history.

Today, September 6, two of those exhibitions come to an end — one in London and another in New York City.

Marilyn at 100

At London’s National Portrait Gallery, “Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait” closes today after opening June 4.

Created in celebration of Monroe’s centenary and in association with her estate, the exhibition traces her life, career and legacy through photographs and artwork spanning decades.

More than 20 photographers are represented, including Cecil Beaton, Philippe Halsman, André de Dienes, Eve Arnold, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Milton Greene, Sam Shaw, Richard Avedon and George Barris.

The exhibition begins with photographs of the young Norma Jeane, before the Marilyn Monroe persona was fully formed, and continues through her Hollywood years and some of the final photographs taken before her death in 1962.

But there’s an important distinction in the way the exhibition approaches those famous images.

Marilyn wasn’t simply the beautiful subject standing in front of someone else’s camera.

The exhibition also examines the role she played in creating those images herself — collaborating with photographers and helping develop the look and persona that would ultimately become recognized around the world.

Personal belongings, including clothing and scripts, add another dimension to the story of the woman behind the photographs.

Before Marilyn, there was Norma Jeane

Among the photographers represented in the London exhibition is André de Dienes, whose relationship with Monroe began before the world knew her as Marilyn.

De Dienes photographed the young Norma Jeane in 1946, during her early modeling years.

Their work together continued beyond those first photographs, and some of the images they created show a strikingly different woman from the carefully polished Hollywood star who would soon become famous.

During one later beach session, Monroe experimented with portraying different emotions for de Dienes’ camera — an example of something that has sometimes been lost in the mythology surrounding her: she understood the power of a photograph and actively participated in creating the image the camera captured.

Those early photographs now sit alongside work from some of the most celebrated photographers and artists of the last century in an exhibition devoted to the very transformation de Dienes witnessed — Norma Jeane becoming Marilyn Monroe.

New York looks at the woman behind the image

Across the Atlantic, another Marilyn exhibition also ends today.

“Manifesting Marilyn: The Making of an Icon” at Genesis House in New York City has taken a different approach to the familiar story.

Rather than concentrating primarily on the movie star and sex symbol, the immersive exhibition presents Monroe as a dreamer, reader, performer, strategist and businesswoman.

Through personal artifacts, archival material, her own voice and immersive displays, the exhibition explores how deliberately she participated in constructing the public identity that became Marilyn Monroe.

It’s an interesting idea 100 years after her birth.

Marilyn Monroe wasn’t simply “discovered.”

She participated in creating Marilyn.

And somehow, Marilyn is still everywhere

Perhaps that’s why, a century after Norma Jeane Mortenson was born, Marilyn Monroe remains almost impossible to escape.

Her photographs aren’t confined to museum exhibitions.

Her image remains on clothing and artwork, in books and documentaries, on hotel walls and throughout Hollywood — a place filled with reminders of stars who once dominated its screens but eventually faded from public consciousness.

Marilyn never really did.

We photographed several images of Monroe displayed inside the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, where her unmistakable face remains at home among reminders of Hollywood’s past.

And among the images we encountered was another connection to the story of Norma Jeane: a photograph identified at the hotel as the work of André de Dienes, the photographer who captured some of her early images before Marilyn Monroe became a household name.

There is something particularly fitting about finding her there.

While exhibitions in London and New York spend this centennial year reconsidering the person behind one of the world’s most recognizable faces, Hollywood continues doing what it has done for decades:

keeping Marilyn on the wall.

Two exhibitions celebrating Marilyn Monroe close today.

The fascination with her clearly hasn’t.