Wes Anderson looks at a puppet from his film Fantastic Mr Fox (2009) at the Design Museum © Matt Alexander PA

A First Look At The Design Museum’s New Wes Anderson Exhibition

4 days ago

Step inside the wacky world of one of contemporary cinema’s most original filmmakers

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A First Look At The Design Museum’s New Wes Anderson Exhibition

Wes Anderson looks at a puppet from his film Fantastic Mr Fox (2009) at the Design Museum © Matt Alexander PA

Do you have a favourite Wes Anderson film? The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) perhaps or The Darjeeling Limited (2007)? Whether you are a Wesophile or not, the Design Museum’s new exhibition – opening this weekend – is a fun foray into the zany mind and meticulously planned world of one of this century’s most original filmmakers. Big director retrospectives are becoming a tried and tested formula for the museum (there was Stanley Kubrick in 2019 and the major Tim Burton exhibition that closed in May) and while this new one may not challenge you, it will surely entertain visitors of all ages, children enticed by the extraordinary stop-motion puppets and models of puffer fish and the jaguar shark from The Life Aquatic while adults delve into Anderson’s imagination and obsessive attention to detail.

Each film, from his first (Bottle Rocket, 1993) to this year’s The Phoenician Scheme (2025), has its own section reflecting the Texan director’s unique and painstaking process: among the 700 items on show are sketches, storyboards, scripts with hand scribblings, props, personal notebooks, candid snaps and behind-the-scenes polaroids of his many A-list collaborators (a very young Owen and Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Gene Hackman, the list goes on…), the 3m wide replica of the bubblegum pink Grand Budapest Hotel (used to capture the facade in the film), Margot Tenenbaum’s Fendi fur coat. It’s all there, every item and detail kept by Anderson and displayed here, in this landmark retrospective inviting visitors into his kooky and wonderful world, one created through imagination and obsessive attention to detail.

A particular treat comes at the end of the exhibition, where you can watch Bottle Rocket in a special screening room. Only 14 minutes long, and made in collaboration with Owen Wilson, this was the short that was developed into a feature film – and the rest is cinema history.

Exhibition Curators Johanna Agerman Ross & Lucia Savi On Their Favourite Wes Anderson Films

Isle of Dogs (2018)

This is Anderson’s second stop-motion animation. It follows the story of the young boy Atari and his guard dog, Spots, as they get separated by a decree sending all canines of Megasaki City to Trash Island after the outbreak of dog flu. It’s a beautiful observation on the relationship between pets and their humans and it has a hilarious script, full of laugh-out-loud lines. The art of the stop-motion animation is incredible, with over one thousand puppets made for the film. In Wes Anderson: The Archives at the Design Museum we are able to highlight the complex process of making stop motion-animation with character studies, armatures (a puppet’s skeleton) and the beautifully crafted final puppets.

Puppets of a dog and a man from Isle of Dogs film

Puppets from Isle of Dogs on display at the Design Museum © Luke Hayes

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

The Grand Budapest Hotel is Anderson’s most successful film commercially and it marks a turning point for the director as it embraces new levels of narrative complexity, with at least three parallel stories unfolding simultaneously. To accomplish this feat of nested narratives, Anderson worked closely with production designer Adam Stockhausen to transform the city of Görlitz on the German-Polish border into the Republic of Zubrowka. In the exhibition you can marvel at the monumental model of the hotel, used in filming of the opening scenes and created by model maker Simon Weiss. By constructing the hotel in miniature, Anderson was free to create an entire original building drawing inspiration from hotels in the past, long since demolished.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

An impressive jaguar shark, personalised Adidas trainers, red beanies and David Bowie’s hits performed in Portuguese by Brazilian artist Seu Jeorge are only some of the many unforgettable ingredients of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. It’s a touching story about an eccentric oceanographer (Bill Murray) out to get revenge on a shark and was filmed in Cinecittà film studios in Rome as well as on board of a World War II minesweeper in the Mediterranean. In the exhibition you can see the many fantastical stop-motion puppets of the marine creatures and costumes by four-time Oscar winner Milena Canonero, all while listening to the film’s memorable soundtrack.