Step inside Tim Burton’s world at the Design Museum this autumn

If you want to step inside the world of Tim Burton’s imagination at the Design Museum’s new exhibition, then you better hurry, as tickets are selling fast. In fact, this exhibition, which nearly didn’t come to London at all, has been the fastest-selling in the museum’s 35-year history.

It’s also an exhibition that will delight Tim Burton fans, with over 600 objects on display ranging from some of his earliest sketches to his latest TV shows and movies.

However, it’s an exhibition that the director said he long resisted coming to London.

Speaking at a Q&A session prior to the exhibition opening, Tim Burton explained that this travelling exhibition has been ongoing for the past decade, but each time he visits it in a new city, he has felt almost uncomfortable — as he put it — it was as if his dirty laundry has been put on display for everyone to look at.

Now that he lives in London, having the exhibition arrive here was something he was initially uncomfortable with. However, he admitted that maybe he had a bit of thin skin and eventually relented.

It’s our good fortune then that Tim Burton’s archive has come to his adopted home town.

It has also been reimagined with new items added, and as Tim Burton noted approvingly, they’ve managed to get his favourite item, a large carousel working for the first time in ages. It now sits in a uv-paint effect cube towards the end of the exhibition.

The exhibition is mainly chronological, starting with his early years and experiments, leading onto his influences and then into the heart of the exhibition, the many films he has been involved in. Although he works across all formats, he is particularly well known for his love of stop-motion animation, and the joy of that is that exhibitions have something tangible to show other than costumes because the actual models are also here.

So yes, Jack Skeleton and his gang from A Nightmare Before Christmas, early models for Mars Attacks (later replaced with CGI), a model of what Beetlejuice nearly looked like (and thank goodness they changed their minds), and so many characters from his many movies.

A lot of familiar costumes are here, of course, from Batman to Edward Scissorhands to Mars Attacks, and a smaller selection of props.

Something that really stands out is the exhibition design. Yes, they could have just put objects in glass cases and people would have been happy, but here they’ve tapped deep into Tim Burton’s imagination to create a landscape straight out of Beetlejuice.

The corridor is a delight and will be appearing in an Instagram feed near you soon, but I also liked the display cases. Apart from a handful of glass cases, most don’t have glass at all but a fine mesh. That works visually well, as you can’t see the mesh unless you get up close, but it’s just opaque enough to add its own atmosphere to the appearance of the displays. It’s a bit like the classic idea of putting tights over a lens to give a soft focus to the photography. It’s much more subtle here, but it’s noticeable, and I liked it.

The decision to ditch the glass was environmental, as display cases are often made bespoke for each exhibition, and using the fabric mesh substantially reduces waste by not needing specially cut sheets of glass to be ordered.

As an exhibition, it’s got just the right mix of archive documents and real objects to leave you learning a bit more about how the artist director thinks while also dumping you into a heady mix of nostalgia.

To be frank, Tim Burton’s movies are so popular that it almost doesn’t matter what I say about the exhibition, it’s already set records for ticket sales. However, the hype is justified as Tim Burton fans are going to come away very pleased.

The gift shop also has a large exhibition catalogue, and I quite liked the museum’s exclusive Beetlejuice brooch.

The exhibition The World of Tim Burton is at the Design Museum until April 2025.

You do need to book tickets soon though as they’re selling fast.

You can book tickets here.