On the occasion of her 80th anniversary celebration and the international #believeinwonder campaign, 24 ORE Cultura – Gruppo 24 Ore, in collaboration with Warner Bros. and DC, celebrates the heroine-pioneer’s anniversary with the exhibition “WONDER WOMAN. The Myth” hosted in Milan at the municipal exhibition venue of Palazzo Morando | Costume Moda Immagine.
The exhibition route
The exhibition begins its journey from the first cover of Sensation Comics #1 in 1942, which inaugurated the first series of comics dedicated to Wonder Woman, following her debut the previous year within the pages of All Star Comics #8, as well as from the academic training and research in the field of psychology that William Moulton Marston undertook to create the figure of the heroine, from her profile and character to her superpowers and down to her costume.
The audience is introduced to the so-called “Golden Age” of Wonder Woman, or the epic period of comics in the United States (1941-1955), through some of the most iconic covers and a video narrative that interweaves History with Myth.
In the postwar, 1950s and early 1960s, the carachter was rethought on the basis of more current models and references, deprived of superpowers (starting in 1968) and finally made part of a new feminist wave. In the exhibition, next to the giant image of Ms. magazine, co-founded by activist Gloria Steinem, a selection of plates by the wonder women, the Italian illustrators of the DC universe (including: Laura Braga, Emanuela Lupacchino, Maria Laura Sanapo) who also want to draw the visitor’s attention to the value that in these decades the all-Italian drawing matrix has brought to the construction of the figure of Wonder Woman as we know her today.
We enter the myth through the immersive, epic-toned video installation that chronicles the formation of Diana Prince on Paradise Island, Themyscira, allowing visitors to discover the mythological origins of Wonder Woman.
The last three decades of Wonder Woman’s history are recounted in a dedicated section. The pantheon of her illustrators now includes artists such as Adam Hughes, Alex Ross, Phil Jimenez, and Brian Bolland, among others; it is a further renaissance of the character, up to The New 52 (since 2011) and Rebirth (since 2016) series.
The exhibition concludes with an excursion into the worlds of television and film: from the TV series starring Lynda Carter to recent films starring Gal Gadot. It is a short journey that also touches the world of fashion, curated in particular through a video installation-with the research contribution of fashion historian Maurizio Francesconi-that emphasizes the importance of the stylistic influences of fashion, which together with the heroine’s costumes has gone through eighty years of changes and has playfully influenced the figure of Wonder Woman in a constant oscillation between the past, the present and an imaginary future.
