Title: Museum of Smoking Exhibit Pays Tongue-in-Cheek Tribute to Iconic Celebrity Habit
By [Author’s Name]
Date: Mon 28 Aug 2023
The Museum of Smoking, operated by Viviana Olen and Matt Harkins of THNK1994, has unveiled its latest exhibit celebrating the iconic moments in smoking history. Dubbed a tongue-in-cheek tribute to a terrible habit, the exhibit showcases famous figures from the early 1990s to the 2010s, capturing their glamorous and often controversial smoking moments.
The exhibit, located in New York City, features black-and-white portraits by Chicago artist Laura Collins, depicting celebrities such as Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, and Paris Hilton with cigarettes in hand. These “it girls” of their time were rarely snapped by paparazzi without a smoking accessory, adding to their allure and mystique.
Harkins, one of the exhibit’s curators, admitted his long-time fascination with smoking, acknowledging it as the inspiration behind the showcase. “There was this website I would look at called smokingsides.net, which I now realize was a fetish website, that would just post every photo you could find of a female celebrity smoking. I just thought it was the most glamorous thing I’d ever seen,” he shared.
While some question whether the exhibit glamorizes a deadly habit, Olen clarifies that they do not advocate for smoking. “If I could have not started smoking, I would have chosen to do that and just enjoy it from afar,” she said. The curators aim to explore the allure and fixation on smoking, even acknowledging the risks through posters in the exhibit that read, “Smoking kills” and quoting Brooke Shields, “If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.”
In recent times, celebrities such as Jenna Ortega, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Lily-Rose Depp have been seen smoking, creating a resurgence that the exhibit aims to capture. Additionally, the exhibit displays campy smoking memorabilia from a time when cigarette brands were promoted with free swag, highlighting the history and impact of smoking on popular culture.
Although smoking rates have significantly decreased in the United States, with only about 11% of adults reported as smokers according to the CDC, the exhibit’s curators believe that the visual portrayal of celebrities smoking still resonates with many due to the shared experience of a “bad, but human, habit.”
The Museum of Smoking invites visitors not to endorse smoking but rather to indulge in a nostalgic experience and examine the cultural impact of smoking on celebrity iconography and society as a whole. Whether visitors engage with the exhibit to reminisce or simply to appreciate the artistry and historical context, the tribute to these iconic smoking moments serves as a thought-provoking and visually captivating experience.
Note: The content of this article is purely fictional and has been created by an AI language model.