600 items from film director Wes Anderson's personal archive go on display in London later this year, in an exhibition celebrating his distinct cinematic style.
Highlights of the Design Museum exhibition include a three-metre wide model of the candy pink Grand Budapest Hotel, which was used to capture the external shots of the building used in the 2014 film. Also on show:
- The vending machines from Asteroid City (2023);
- Gwyneth Paltrow's FENDI fur coat from her role as Margot Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001);
- Anderson's own notebooks, in which he develops and records his ideas for each film;
- Boy with Apple, the ‘priceless Renaissance portrait’ from The Grand Budapest Hotel, painted by British artist Michael Taylor, commissioned by Wes Anderson specially for the film;
- Various original storyboards, polaroids, sketches, costumes (including Oscar-winning costumes from The Grand Budapest Hotel), stop-motion puppets, miniature models, paintings, and props;
- Sections dedicated to stop motion films Fantastic Mr Fox (2009) and Isle of Dogs (2018), exploring how Anderson creates miniature worlds.
14-minute crime comedy film Bottle Rocket, which Anderson wrote with actor Owen Wilson, will be shown at the exhibition. It began as a short film, but Anderson remade it into his first feature film, kickstarting his career. It was seeing all of the props from this film being sold off by the film’s production company after shooting which inspired Anderson to keep items from his future films, resulting in his huge collection and archive today.
Johanna Agerman Ross, Chief Curator at the Design Museum and co-curator of Wes Anderson: The Archives, said:
It is an absolute gift that even as a young film-maker Wes Anderson had the vision and foresight to save all his props and beautifully crafted objects for his own archive. We are thrilled to be the first to fully dive into the archive’s full riches.
Anderson himself was involved in curating the exhibition, a collaboration between la Cinémathèque française in Paris and the Design Museum. A smaller version of the exhibition debuted in Paris in March, but the London show will have approximately 100 additional items, with many exhibits on display in Britain for the first time. It's the first ever retrospective of the filmmaker, though previous Accidentally Wes Anderson exhibitions of photos inspired by his unique aesthetic have been very popular.
Wes Anderson: The Archives is at the Design Museum, 21 November 2025-26 July 2026. Tickets are on sale now.
