We’ve been eyeing a road trip to Las Vegas ever since we heard that a Tim Burton exhibition would be heading to the Neon Museum there. And now that it’s open and we’ve seen what’s waiting for us, we’re wondering why we aren’t already on our way to the desert—maybe if we say the exhibit name three times it’ll just magically appear here?
Photograph: Courtesy Denise Truscello/Neon Museum
“Lost Vegas: Tim Burton @ The Neon Museum” has situated some site-specific installations from the director alongside historical marquees at the Neon Museum Boneyard. Burton, who grew up in Burbank, made regular weekend trips with his family to Vegas as a kid, and in the opening wall text for the exhibition he notes how the works he created for this exhibit pay homage to the peculiar and beautiful past of the city.
Some of Burton’s works on display are typical of his familiar motif without being tied to a particular property: think rotund humans with shadowy eyes and lumpy creatures with stripes and polka dots. But others are straight out of a screen: the light-up “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice” sign from that film’s graveyard, a scale model motel used in a music video for the Killers, and life-size aliens from Mars Attacks!, arranged right near where the “ack ack” spouting invaders (23-year-old spoiler alert) vaporize Danny DeVito in the Boneyard scene.
Photograph: Courtesy Denise Truscello/Neon Museum
Photograph: Courtesy Denise Truscello/Neon Museum
The exhibit also includes some playful digital installations, as well as pieces incorporated into “Brilliant!,” the museum’s projection-mapping nighttime show in the North Gallery that brings unrestored signs back to life with a bit of projection magic.
“Lost Vegas: Tim Burton @ The Neon Museum” runs through February 15, 2020. (UPDATE 1/2/20: The exhibition has been extended through April 12, 2020.) Timed tickets are available for each month at the beginning of the preceding month (so December tickets go on sale in early November, for example). A general admission ticket, which lets you take an hour-long walk through the Boneyard, costs $30. The nighttime Tim Burton-ified “Brilliant!”, meanwhile, costs $24 for a 24-minute experience. Not-so-shockingly, given the popularity of the exhibit, no discounted combo tickets are available.
Check out some more photos of the exhibit below.
Photograph: Courtesy Denise Truscello/Neon Museum
Photograph: Courtesy Denise Truscello/Neon Museum
Photograph: Courtesy Denise Truscello/Neon Museum
Photograph: Courtesy Denise Truscello/Neon Museum
Photograph: Courtesy Denise Truscello/Neon Museum
Photograph: Courtesy Denise Truscello/Neon Museum
Photograph: Courtesy Denise Truscello/Neon Museum