NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art will offer Tim Burton Tour Nights, private group tours of the exhibition Tim Burton, on selected nights during the run of the exhibition, November 22, 2009, to April 26, 2010. Tim Burton Tour Nights will include a one-hour VIP group tour of the exhibition, after the Museum closes to the public, and a reserved preferred seat at that night’s Tim Burton film screening.

The exhibition Tim Burton will bring together over 700 examples of rarely or never-before-seen drawings, paintings, storyboards, moving-image works, puppets, maquettes, costumes, and cinematic ephemera, and includes an extensive film series spanning Burton’s 27-year career. The exhibition explores how Burton has taken inspiration from sources in pop culture and reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking as an expression of personal vision, garnering him an international audience of fans and influencing a generation of young artists working in film, video, and graphics.

Tim Burton Tour Nights are limited to 25 people per tour. Tickets are $75 per person ($65 for MoMA members), and must be reserved in advance by contacting MoMA Group Services at (212) 708-9685 or groupservices@moma.org. Tickets will go on sale this fall.

Organized in collaboration with Burton, the exhibition presents artworks and objects drawn primarily from the artist’s personal archive, as well as studio archives and the private collections of Burton’s collaborators. Included are little-known drawings, paintings, and sculptures created in the spirit of contemporary Pop Surrealism, as well as work generated during the conception and production of his films, such as original The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride puppets; Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, and Sleepy Hollow costumes; and even severed-head props from Mars Attacks! Also featured are the first public display of his student and earliest nonprofessional films; his long-unseen television adaptation Hansel and Gretel (1983); examples of his work for the flash animation internet series The World of Stainboy (2000); a selection of the artist’s oversized Polaroid prints; graphic art and texts for non-film projects, like The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories (1997) and Tim Burton’s Tragic Toys for Girls and Boys (2003) collectible figure series; and art from a number of early unrealized projects. Additionally, a selection of international and domestic posters from Burton’s films will be on display in the theater lobby galleries.