Fractured fairy tale
The poignant "Diana: A Celebration" is a tasteful tribute
which the tragic end to her life is not allowed to spoil.
By LENNIE BENNETT, Times Staff Writer
Published February 17, 2005
The wedding dress, veil and 25-foot-long train designed by Elizabeth
and David Emanuel for Diana’s wedding in 1981 are made of
silk taffeta, ivory tulle and lace.
ST. PETERSBURG - "Diana: A Celebration,"
which opens Saturday at the Florida International Museum, would
probably have pleased the woman whom it honors, the late Princess
of Wales. Elegant, dignified and tastefully poignant, it keeps
a stiff upper lip while inviting you to have a discreet little
weep.
I confess I teared up a couple of times, seeing
displays of the great promise of her youth and remembering the
violent circumstances of her death.
And you will have to rely on your memory for that
last part of her life because, while the promise is here, the
denouement is all but ignored.
Diana, for those who are new to the planet, was
the beautiful, spirited daughter of an English earl when she was
wooed and wed by Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, in
1981. Her story was the stuff of happily-ever-after stories, especially
with the birth of her first son, William, who was in line after
her husband to wear the crown. Another son, Harry, followed, and
she was the radiant, devoted mother of uncounted magazine covers.
As we learned by the time of her divorce 15 years
later, the marriage had begun unraveling from the first, doomed
perhaps before vows were even exchanged, by Charles' devotion
to another woman who was married and unavailable as a future queen.
(That would be Camilla Parker Bowles whom, Charles announced last
week, he'll finally wed in April.) Diana, too, was reported to
have had dalliances during the final, difficult years of her marriage.
She had about a year of single life before she died.
She filled it with a whirlwind of public appearances in support
of good causes, adding her considerable glamor to any event. She
continued, by all accounts, to be a great mother. She obviously
tried to put the past behind her and spoke little in public, except
for one televised interview, of the bitter betrayal she felt.
Less than a month before she died, speculation was
intense (as was all coverage of every move Diana made) that she
and Dodi Al Fayed, her new beau and son of a wealthy Arab businessman,
were in love and discussing marriage. She and Fayed were killed
on Aug. 31, 1997, in a high-speed car crash in Paris that was
said to be prompted by paparazzi chasing their car.
The world mourned her passing, but the depth of
grief surprised media watchers, who estimated that 2.5-billion
people tuned into her televised funeral. The ceremony had the
grandeur usually afforded heads of state, though Diana no longer
had any official affiliation with the royal family. She was buried
on the grounds of Althorp, her ancestral home.
But Diana was not allowed to rest in peace. She
was still an industry fueling unauthorized books, media stories,
trinkets and bibelots.
The Spencers decided to take control of as much
of the Diana cult as they could. They opened a memorial on the
grounds of Althorp, filling it with her personal effects for tourists
visiting during the summer season, its profits funneled back into
the Princess Fund that supports causes special to Diana. In recent
years, the exhibition has been packed up and sent on limited tours.
It comes to St. Petersburg after a successful run at the Museum
of Art in Fort Lauderdale.
The exhibit greets visitors with a magnificent diamond
tiara in a case backed by an equally magnificent photographic
portrait of Diana wearing it.
It sets up a tension that continues through the
rest of the show that tries to resolve the problem of so many
exhibitions celebrating an individual: how to animate a life once
the life-spark is gone?
The Spencers' lineage is documented and they are,
indeed, a noble family, one of coronets and old palaces that doesn't
need to be oversold. We don't get any of the great paintings in
the Spencers' collection but there are intimate, charming pastels
of Spencer women that were probably intended to hang in a boudoir
rather than a drawing room.
The most moving portion is devoted to Diana's childhood,
helped by an evocative soundtrack. We know that her father pretty
much raised her and her three siblings after her mother ran off
with another man when Diana was about 8. The rift between mother
and daughter apparently was never fully healed, so the home movies
taken by her father have an elegiac quality. Everyone seems so
happy in the movies, smiling and laughing. But that, Diana learned
early on, is the face one presents to the camera. She's with her
mother, brother and two sisters, celebrating birthdays, gamboling
in a bathing suit in one sequence, still a child but already possessed
of a photogenic charisma and long, gamine legs.
A 1969 report card gives her good marks in most
subjects but only a "fairly good" in history. Perhaps,
it subtly suggests, she might have avoided future heartache if
she had attended better the lessons taught by the behavior of
many previous monarchs.
We're tempted to find such coded messages in these
random items that probably bear no deeper meaning. No code is
needed to interpret the import of a menu card for a dinner hosted
by Charles' aunt, Princess Margaret in 1980. In her loopy hand,
Diana writes on it, "sat next to Prince Charles and wore
new dress and diamond and ruby earrings."
Diana's wedding dress with its precedent-setting
25-foot train is resplendently displayed. The Spencer tiara that
she wore with a billowing tuille veil is there along with her
beaded satin shoes. To those of us who watched the royal wedding
in 1981 on TV, the dress seemed like a luscious puff of creamy
silk, fluffy and feminine, as unsophisticated as the young woman
herself. It was so different from the austere elegance of her
last years when she sheathed herself in the silk and beaded columns
of Gianni Versace and Jacques Azagury.
Without Diana, the wedding dress, voluminous as
it is, seems somehow plain.
The exhibit's display of beautifully fashioned suits,
dresses and evening clothes by the world's top designers are perhaps
the hardest to reconcile with the accompanying photographs in
which they adorn the vibrant woman for whom they were made. Draped
on stiff, faceless mannequins, they are no less lovely but somehow
diminished. Switch on the right side of your brain and you can
get a real kick out of how much she evolved as a discerning dresser.
Some of the early stuff is a mistake and I admire
her family's decision to include it, to let us see the developing
arc of that part of her life, at least. The 1987 blue silk taffeta
by Bruce Oldfield with red polka dots, shirred like a garish parachute,
is flatout dreadful. On another early occasion, she wore a diamond
and emerald necklace as a headband, considered a bold fashion
move at the time that didn't quite work. Years later, that same
necklace reappears around her neck to accent a fabulous slinky
black number. The "uniform" she wore for land mine inspections
is included: a Ralph Lauren denim shirt with Giorgio Armani stretch
khaki jeans. The dress gallery ends with a stack of Louis Vuitton
suitcases, well-worn and tagged with pink Princess of Wales labels.
The remainder of the exhibition is really a coda.
There is no reference to the way she died or with whom. Walls
of glass cases hold hundreds of condolence books people have signed.
Her brother's speech, both the handwritten draft and the final
typed version, with more handwritten annotations, recall the withering
dressing-down he gave to the royal family at Diana's funeral,
causing even the queen to flinch.
What this exhibition shows is that Diana was, to
borrow Henry James' description for one of his female heroes,
"magnificent." That quality is apparent even more in
her absence here among her things.
The revised lyrics of Candle in the Wind, performed
at her funeral by Elton John, pay tribute to their friendship.
Like this show, like her, it's beautiful
and sad and seems slightly airbrushed.
This exhibition, honoring
the peoples' princess, is scheduled to open February 19, 2005
and remain on view through May 15, 2005, Museum officials said.
Tickets will go on sale Friday, September 24.
Diana, A Celebration, produced
by Ohio-based Arts & Exhibitions International LLC in association
with the Althorp Estate, is set to make its U.S. premiere at the
Museum of Art / Fort Lauderdale in October 2004 prior to its stop
in St. Petersburg. Since 1998, the objects have made their permanent
home at Althorp Estate in England, the Spencer family's 500-year-old
ancestral estate.
In announcing the St. Petersburg
engagement, John Norman, President of AEI, said: "We considered
various cities and venues for a second U.S. stop before returning
to Althorp for the summer and, after careful consideration, we
believed that the logistics of moving up the coast of Florida
combined with the beauty and splendor of the Florida International
Museum and the region in general made for an excellent fit. We
have had strong advance ticket sales for the Fort Lauderdale engagement
and indications are that we will have strong interest in and around
the Central and West Coast regions."
Since 1998, the exhibition
at Althorp has generated approximately $2 million for charities
supported by the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. In St.
Petersburg, Ten percent of the retail price of products sold at
the exhibition goes to projects supported by the same fund. For
more information on the exhibit, visit www.dianacelebration.com,
www.althorp.com, www.artsandexhibitions.com, or www.floridamuseum.org.
Ticket Information
Tickets can be purchased by calling Ticketmaster at 813-287-8844
or 727-898-2100 or online at www.ticketmaster.com.
Group ticket sales and
reservations can also be arranged by calling Florida Group Tours
at 800-995-6674 or 813-987-6000 or online at www.floridagrouptours.com.
Reservations will be booked
in 30-minute intervals; there are no restrictions on the time
taken to tour the exhibition. $19.50 for adults (13-61); $15.50
for seniors (62+), students (with ID) & military personnel;
$14.50 for groups of 15 or more; $9.50 for Museum members; $9
for children (7-12); $6 for school groups; and toddlers free (six
and under).
Audio tours are also available.
The exhibit can be seen Monday – Saturday, 9 a.m. –
6 p.m. (Fridays until 8 p.m.) and Sunday, noon – 6 p.m. Last
admission is one hour prior to closing time
Princess Diana
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