Conserving Performance, Performing Conservation: Kim Kardashian x Marilyn Monroe

Pelta Feldman, Jules (2023). Conserving Performance, Performing Conservation: Kim Kardashian x Marilyn Monroe Studies in Conservation, pp. 1-19. Taylor & Francis 10.1080/00393630.2023.2260628

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After May 2, 2022, heritage conservation briefly became a hot topic in the world of celebrity gossip. That evening, Kim Kardashian, a reality TV star and entrepreneur, wore a 60-year-old dress that had belonged to Marilyn Monroe to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Costume Institute Gala. In wearing Monroe’s dress, Kardashian sought to channel the glamor and celebrity of the mid-century star. She also summoned the ire of museum professionals, who considered her choice to wear a fragile historical garment a flagrant violation of conservation ethics. Yet increasingly, the discipline of conservation has come to recognize that an object’s ‘integrity’ does not rest solely in its physical materials – and the emerging discourse of performance conservation, informed by research into the conservation of contemporary art as well as intangible cultural heritage, emphasizes the active lives of what I call ‘performative objects’ over their physical form and static appearance. Here, I posit that Kardashian’s wearing of Monroe’s dress may be understood as a form of conservation – perhaps not of the dress itself, but of the performance of which that dress was an integral part, and without which, I argue, the dress has little significance. To make this argument, I will also draw on innovative approaches to the conservation of Indigenous heritage that recognize the preservation value of reanimating objects from the past. Establishing Monroe’s dress as a ‘performative object,’ an item inextricably linked to the body in motion, I endeavor to show how performance itself preserves the past.

Item Type:	Journal Article (Original Article)
Division/Institute:	Bern Academy of the Arts Bern Academy of the Arts > Institute Materiality in Art and Culture Bern Academy of the Arts > Institute Materiality in Art and Culture > Contemporary Art and Media
Name:	Pelta Feldman, Jules0000-0001-8308-5174
ISSN:	0039-3630
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Language:	English
Submitter:	Jules Pelta Feldman
Date Deposited:	29 Sep 2023 10:35
Last Modified:	13 Dec 2023 09:58
Publisher DOI:	10.1080/00393630.2023.2260628
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Fashion conservation; performance conservation; indigenous conservation
ARBOR DOI:	10.24451/arbor.20071
URI:	https://arbor.bfh.ch/id/eprint/20071