Michael Jackson’s Rarely Seen Art to Go on View in New Museum

While Michael Jackson’s music will be thrust into the spotlight this year via a blockbuster biopic on the big screen, a lesser-known part of his body of work, his visual art, may soon be showing up in a gallery near you.

The singer’s brother Jermaine Jackson revealed in December plans to launch a traveling museum, which will debut in Monaco at the end of 2026 as part of the Monaco Biennale. The tourism agency’s first offering will be an exhibition of 120 works of Michael Jackson’s art.

“He’s not just a stage artist, he’s a visual artist, a painter,” Jermaine Jackson reportedly said.

According to a report released by the agency monaco tribunethe museum has a collection of 200 works and is labeled a “Showseum” rather than an institution. Monaco Life The works, which are valued at $1.6 billion, “were kept largely undisclosed in a secure facility in Washington, D.C.,” the report said. The publication also claims that the museum owns a $160 million portrait of Marilyn Monroe that Jackson signed with Pop artist Andy Warhol.

Monaco Life It also said the works are not for sale because the museum’s purpose is “to share the heritage of the world in an unprecedented way that has never existed before.”

The collection reportedly includes other works from Jackson’s collaboration with Warhol, with whom Jackson collaborated on a group of portraits in 1984. One of the portraits even appeared on the cover of Warhol. time That year. Jackson also painted portraits of U.S. presidents including George Washington and Abraham Lincoln; these works are also owned by the New Museum.

this monaco tribune The museum is “inspired by the Venice Biennale, with installations spread across multiple locations in Monaco,” the report states. (In fact, the Biennale’s main exhibitions are only held in two locations, although many other biennales are held in multiple venues in a single location.) The locations are set in both indoor and outdoor venues.

The museum is now scheduled to open the same year as the film’s release Michael Playing in theaters around the world. The film has been pushed back several times from its original release date amid attempts to silence some people who claim they were sexually abused in the decades before Jackson’s death in 2009, leading to legal complications.