“Forever Marilyn,” the 26-foot-tall statue that became a controversial fixture on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, has been getting final touchups since its arrival in Palm Springs on Monday morning.
The 34,000-pound sculpture, which cost about $40,000 to transport, took a week to be trucked across the country. Passersby have gotten a sneak peak this week as installers, and a few cranes, reassemble the statue at Palm Canyon and Tahquitz Canyon Way, where it will remain until June 2013.
The sculpture by Seward Johnson, the 80-year-old artist and Johnson & Johnson heir who’s known for casting famous images into giant sculptures, re-creates the scene from the 1955 film “The Seven Year Itch” in which a drafty New York subway grate blows the sex symbol’s skirt well above her knees.