LACMA has hosted blockbuster filmmaker retrospectives in the past, with gallery spaces dedicated to auteurs like Tim Burton and Stanley Kubrick. But the Miracle Mile museum's upcoming film-inspired exhibition promises to be its most creepily creative yet.
Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters will bring together film art, personal objects and notebook drawings from the director behind Pan's Labyrinth and Pacific Rim. The specially ticketed exhibition, slated to run from July 31 to November 27, marks the Mexican filmmaker's first museum retrospective.
You'll find about 500 startling, horrifying and beautiful objects throughout the exhibition including sculpture, paintings, prints, photography, costumes, ancient artifacts, books, maquettes and film—LACMA will pitch in 60 objects from its own collection. In addition, the exhibition will draw some objects from Del Toro's personal residence-meets-museum, Bleak House. The Dickensian workshop serves as a home for both Del Toro's creations and inspirations, with works inspired by and collectible from Alfred Hitchcock and H.P. Lovecraft.
The exhibition will be divided up into themes that should sound familiar to fans of Del Toro's whimsical horror films: childhood and innocence; Victoriana; magic, alchemy and the occult; movies, comics, pop culture; Frankenstein and horror; freaks and monsters; and death and the afterlife. In addition, one section will be dedicated to a version of Del Toro’s Rain Room—not to be confused with, you know, Rain Room—a favorite spot of his in Bleak House in which a false window and special effects simulate a perpetual thunderstorm.
After its debut at LACMA, Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters will travel to its co-organizing institutions: the Minneapolis Institute of Art (February 26–May 21, 2017) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (September 30, 2017–January 7, 2018).
Photograph: Courtesy Insight Editions
Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters opens at LACMA on July 31 and runs through November 27. Tickets are $25 (including museum admission) for adults, seniors and students and free for members and children 17 and under.