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Toronto’s portrait party

By Alex Redgrave

The Queen City shows off Hollywood royalty.

Nobody exudes effortless glamour like Katharine Hepburn elegantly brooding atop a gleaming marble sphere – or Demi Moore showing off an impressive bump of her own. Walking through the exhibition Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913–2008, at the Royal Ontario Museum until January 3, 2010, you might feel like you’re attending an exclusive party where Hollywood royalty and charismatic newsmakers mingle, each looking more fabulous than the last.

A collaboration between Vanity Fair and the National Portrait Gallery, London, the show arrives in Toronto as part of the extended celebrations marking the 95th anniversary of the magazine’s founding in 1913 and the 25th anniversary of its modern incarnation. With nearly 150 celebrity photographs, the exhibition is a who’s who of the last century. You can take in everything from Edward Steichen’s iconic image of Gloria Swanson, veiled by a thin black lace curtain, to a more recent shot of contemporary starlets Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley, baring almost all for Annie Leibovitz in an updated version of Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe.

Beneath the shiny surface of these images, there is also a depth that makes you feel as if you’ve been let in on intimate moments. Photographer Mary Ellen Mark captures Liza Minnelli with hands on hips and cigarette dangling from perfectly glossed lips, her melancholy gaze revealing an inner fragility. Diana, Princess of Wales, smiles radiantly in a slightly blurred exposure, and Jack Nicholson tees off in a bathrobe after yet another rollicking night on the town.

The style quotient stays high even after you’ve left the exhibit space. Head to the ROM’s c5 Restaurant Lounge, on the fifth floor, for a Romtini – the edgy, steel-colored house cocktail made of Grey Goose vodka, fruity Hpnotiq and a generous splash of scotch. There, at night, architect Daniel Libeskind’s dramatic, crystal-inspired peaked glass ceilings allow you to keep on stargazing.

 

Getting here

Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen’s Park, 416-586-8000, rom.on.ca
Ontario Tourism, 1-800-ONTARIO (1-800-668-2746), www.ontariotravel.net

Alex Redgrave is a Montréal-based writer and editor who dreams in Technicolor and understands things in varying shades of gray.

Photo: Royal Ontario Museum, 2009. All rights reserved.