Design Museum Announces NEW Wes Anderson Exhibition
The Design Museum had announced details of the hundreds of objects from the films of Wes Anderson which will go on display in a landmark retrospective of the work of the director later this year.
The monumental candy-pink model of the Grand Budapest Hotel — that was used to capture the building’s façade for the 2014 film — will be one of the largest and most recognisable items in the exhibition, which opens at the Design Museum in London in November. Spanning over 3-metres in width, the model will be one of over 600 objects on display which will collectively illustrate Anderson’s meticulous craft of filmmaking.
Across the exhibition, items will range from original storyboards, polaroids, sketches, and famed costumes worn by much-loved characters, to stop-motion puppets, miniature models, paintings, props and even Anderson’s handwritten notebooks.
The Design Museum has been granted unprecedented access to Wes Anderson’s extensive archives, which the filmmaker has painstakingly built up over three decades. This will be the very first time the majority of these objects have been publicly displayed in Britain.
Through these unique objects, the exhibition will chart the evolution of Anderson’s films from his first short and feature films in the 1990s, up to his most recent productions. The show will follow a broadly chronological survey of his career, with each section dedicated to one of his films. It will begin with 1996’s Bottle Rocket — Anderson’s first feature film — right up to his Oscar-winning short film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023) from the anthology collection The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More.
Wes Anderson: The Archives is the first major museum exhibition devoted to Wes Anderson’s extensive and distinctive cinematic output. It is a collaboration between la Cinémathèque française in Paris and the Design Museum in London — and with Wes Anderson himself.
The show premiered at la Cinémathèque française in March and will be expanded and re-imagined at the Design Museum later this year. Over 100 objects will be added, and there’ll be a new emphasis on the complex process of Anderson’s world-building design work and the contributions of his trusted collaborators.
Visitors will be able to get up-close to immediately recognisable items that have appeared on screen across all of Anderson’s films. 3
Highlights include the vending machines from Asteroid City (2023), the FENDI fur coat worn by Gwyneth Paltrow as Margot Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), and the original stop motion puppets used to depict the fantastical sea creatures in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004).
Tickets are available to buy now.
