If you’re looking for this year’s answer to Barbenheimer, head straight for High Street Kensington. Here, the contents of Tim Burton’s drawers, attics and crypts – because he definitely has a crypt – have been arranged into a mind-altering residence at The Design Museum – just downstairs from the venue’s other blockbuster exhibition. Yes, Barbie upstairs, the Corpse Bride down below.
Burton’s goth-ucopia has decamped to London just in time for Halloween, after a 10-city world tour. With advance ticket sales breaking records – 32,000 and counting – the Californian’s adopted hometown is clearly already sold on the chance to eyeball 50 years of ceaselessly imaginative output up close.
And eyeballs are everywhere here. They adorn monsters sketched, modelled and doodled by Burton over a career that stretches back to a restless, ambitious youth in the Burbank ’burbs. The opening section charts those ‘Anywhere, USA’ years, where the preternaturally gifted Burton was experimenting with stop-motion animation and pitching kids’ books to Disney. Pages from that book – The Giant Zlig – are on display, alongside a polite but encouraging rejection letter praising the young Burton’s imagination but pointing out its similarity to Dr Seuss’s.
The chance to peer at Edward Scissorhands’ actual scissorhands will be a rush for any movie lover
Before transporting visitors into the heart of Burton’s Hollywood era, there’s a room dedicated to formative influences: Ray Harryhausen, Hammer films, German Expressionism, Universal monsters. Toho, too, as evidenced by the little Godzilla figurine that sits atop one of the exhibition highlights: Burton’s desk. Crowded with watercolours, blotting pads filled with doodles, scripts and a Curse of Frankenstein mug, it’s a window into the world of a man who clearly takes WFH to a whole new level.
You can’t touch anything here, but it’s still a tactile experience. You can feel the textures of Coleen Atwood’s extraordinary costumes – the body-hugging Catwoman suit Michelle Pfeiffer’s prowled through Batman Returns seems, somehow, even smaller IRL – and an audio soundtrack of suitably ghostly noises and the sounds of scrunched paper and clattering keyboards gives it all a gently immersive feel.
A clever German Expressionism-style corridor invites you into the final Cabinet of Dr. Burton: a slightly scattergun collection of his work beyond Hollywood featuring his music videos, the rotating, fluorescent carousel he created for a 2009 MoMA exhibition, and Alexander McQueen’s Burton-inspired collection.
A grumble? The layout feels quite safe. Like 2019’s extraordinary Stanley Kubrick exhibition, the route through it is more chronological than thematic – until a short film near the exit takes visitors, incongruously, back to Burton’s early, Vincent Price-inspired animations. But Kubrick’s archives were more varied; his mysteries more abundant. Burton’s creepy-crawly aesthetic has been a beloved feature of our lives for four decades, and the exhibition doesn’t take us much deeper into his head. Still, there’s plenty of visual magic here, and the chance to peer at Edward Scissorhands’ actual scissorhands or the steel-and-latex Martian puppets originally earmarked for Mars Attacks! will be a rush for any movie lover.
Age-wise, it’ll work best for tweens and older kids, with a small section on the low-key terrifying Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children ready to scar the unwary for life (trigger warning: more eyeballs, this time being munched by a faceless demon).
A ‘weird, beautiful funhouse’ is how Burton himself describes the exhibition. Step inside and take a mind-expanding tour of this modern-day goth Expressionist.
How long does it take to go around the Tim Burton exhibition?
The exhibition should take around an hour for most visitors to view, but there are no time limits so you are welcome to spend longer if you wish to go at a slower pace. Visitors should note that the gallery starts closing 30 minutes before the museum closes.
How to get tickets and prices
Tickets can be booked directly through the Design Museum’s website here. Ticket prices vary for peak and off-peak times, and how early in advance they are booked.
Tickets cost between £19.69 and £26.85 for adults, while concessions and student tickets cost £14.77-£20.14 and children cost £9.85-£13.43. Under 6s go free, but tickets must still be booked. There are also a variety of family tickets available, as well as discounts for National Art Pass members, while Design Museum members go free.
