Tim Burton exhibition to open in New York next month

The exhibition will bring together over 700 expressions of Burton’s incredible imagination, including never-before-seen drawings, storyboards, paintings, maquettes, puppets (the originals from The Corpse Bride and The Nightmare Before Christmas), moving-image works, costumes (Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow and Batman Returns), props (a severed head from Mars Attacks!) and more. Naturally, his canon of work will also be screened, all 14 of his feature films from 1985’s Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure through to 2007’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, with little seen treasures like his shorts Vincent (1982) and Frankenweenie (1984) also getting an airing.

Burton has worked with the team at MoMA organising the event and Ron Magliozzi, the museum’s assistant curator is clearly psyched by the tantalising project. “There is no other living filmmaker possessing Tim Burton’s level of accomplishment and reputation whose full body of work has been so well hidden from public view,” he enthuses. “Seeing so much that was previously inaccessible in a museum context should serve to fuel renewed appreciation and fresh appraisal of this much-admired artist.”

In support of this exhibition, MoMA will also host “The Lurid Beauty of Monsters”, screening a series of films that have inspired and influenced Burton. Unsurprisingly, there’s a dash of German expressionism and gothic horror in there evident in masterpieces such as Murnau’s Nosferatu and Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.

And the Burton love-in will be opened with a benefit dinner on the 17th November, which will boast such Burton luminaries as Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Nabbing a ticket for this starry tribute isn’t cheap (the cheapest coming in at an eye-watering $2,500), but to catch the exhibition it’ll cost you a more modest $20.

To check prices, times and more, visit the MoMA website here.

[via IndieWIRE]