Exhuming Edie Sedgwick at the MFA

Boston joins in the celebration of late Warhol muse and Pop Art Poster Girl Edie Sedgwick. Tonight, the MFA will screen Sedgwick's final movie, Ciao! Manhattan, which was released shortly after her death in 1971.

The Sedgwick tribute is timed to complement the release of Edie: Girl on Fire by David Weisman, who also directed Ciao! Manhattan, and Melissa Painter. It's probably a good idea to see Sedgwick on screen and read about her as she was before Factory Girl, the Sedgwick biopic starring British starlet/fashionista Sienna Miller, hits theaters. Rumor has it that the biopic is reshooting and might be a dud.

In case you aren't familiar with Edie Sedgwick, she helped put the "pop" in "Pop Art." She didn't sing, she didn't dance, and, depending on how you view Warhol's film catalog and Ciao! Manhattan, she didn't act either. But, on screen and in photographs, she was absolutely luminous. It wouldn't be stretching it to say that her face helped launch the boats of '60s cultural excess. Her backstory as a blueblood rebelling against her family further added to the mystique, but she didn't make her wealth the core of her public presentation, unlike certain other "celebutantes" of today.

When Sedgwick overdosed, the 60s were ending in a nasty hangover, for her and everyone else. She died asleep in Santa Barbara, after documentary filmmakers caught her one last time, sitting in an audience during a scene for the series that gave birth to all reality television - PBS' An American Family. The timing of her exit was oddly fitting, in that her death marked the transition from what was Pop Art to Pop Culture.

Ciao! Manhattan will be screened at Remis Auditorium at the MFA tonight at 8:30 pm, and David Weisman and Melissa Painter will be signing the newly released Edie: Girl on Fire at the MFA bookshop.