LONDON.- The Design Museum in London has unveiled its major new Wes Anderson exhibition, a landmark retrospective of the work of one of the world’s most loved filmmakers.

Anderson has officially inaugurated the exhibition — titled Wes Anderson: The Archives — ahead of Friday’s public opening. He visited the museum and posed for photographs with the exhibition’s curators. Over 700 items are on show, and it marks the first time his archives have gone on display in the UK.

The Design Museum also reveals today that the exhibition will bring Anderson’s career right up to date, with objects on display from his most recent feature film: 2025’s The Phoenician Scheme.

Over two-dozen beautifully made items from the film are on show. These include a pipe from Dunhill and a bejewelled dagger made by contemporary artist and sculptor Harumi Klossowska de Rola.

Exhibition curators Lucia Savi and Johanna Agerman Ross said, “The inclusion of these objects from The Phoenician Scheme is a fitting conclusion to this expansive exhibition. Wes Anderson has collected objects throughout his career — the archives that form the backbone of this show are a testament to this instinct. In his latest film, collecting plays a central role as the main character, Anatole 'Zsa-zsa' Korda, is himself a passionate collector of art, books, residences and businesses. So, we are thrilled that we can bring this latest chapter in Wes Anderson’s story to visitors.”

The museum also reveals that three additional short films will be screened in full. As well as the previously announced 14-minute Bottle Rocket short, visitors can enjoy Hotel Chevalier (2007), a prologue to The Darjeeling Limited, and Castello Cavalcanti (2013), made in collaboration with Prada. Most recently, he directed The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (2023), a series of shorts adapted from Roald Dahl stories. One of the shorts in the series — The Swan — will be shown.

Seen together, the shorts screened in the exhibition chart Anderson's evolving use of the format — and it is the first time in Britian they have been projected together.

Across Wes Anderson: The Archives, items range from original storyboards, polaroids, sketches, and famed costumes worn by much-loved characters, to stop-motion puppets, miniature models, paintings, props and even Anderson’s handwritten notebooks.

The Design Museum has been granted unprecedented access to Wes Anderson’s extensive archives, which the filmmaker has painstakingly built up over three decades. This will be the very first time the majority of these objects have been publicly displayed in Britain.

Through these unique objects, the exhibition charts the evolution of Anderson’s films from his first short and feature films in the 1990s, up to his most recent productions. The show will follow a broadly chronological survey of his career, with each section dedicated to one of his films. It will begin with 1996’s Bottle Rocket — Anderson’s first feature film — right up to his Oscar-winning short film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023) from the anthology collection The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More, and 2025’s The Phoenician Scheme.

Wes Anderson: The Archives is the first major museum exhibition devoted to Wes Anderson’s extensive and distinctive cinematic output. It is a collaboration between la Cinémathèque française in Paris and the Design Museum in London — and with Wes Anderson himself.

The show premiered at la Cinémathèque française in March and is expanded and re-imagined here at the Design Museum. Over 300 objects have been added, and there is a new emphasis on the complex process of Anderson’s world-building design work and the contributions of his trusted collaborators.

Object highlights

Visitors will be able to get up-close to immediately recognisable items that have appeared on screen across all of Anderson’s films.

A major highlight is the monumental candy-pink model of the Grand Budapest Hotel — that was used to capture the building’s façade for the 2014 film — and which is one of the largest and most recognisable items in the exhibition. Spanning over 3-metres in width, the model is one of over 700 objects on display which will collectively illustrate Anderson’s meticulous craft of filmmaking.

Other highlights include the vending machines from Asteroid City (2023), the FENDI fur coat worn by Gwyneth Paltrow as Margot Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), and the original stop motion puppets used to depict the fantastical sea creatures in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004).

Also on display is Boy with Apple, the ‘priceless Renaissance portrait’ that is unexpectedly inherited by Ralph Fiennes' character Gustave H in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). In reality, the painting is contemporary work by British artist Michael Taylor and was commissioned by Wes Anderson specially for the film. The painting is shown alongside Fiennes' Gustave H concierge costume, as well as the coat, dress and accessories worn by Tilda Swinton’s character Madame D, the wealthy aristocrat who is the original owner of the painting in the film.

A very rare treat for Wes Anderson fans is the screening of Anderson’s Bottle Rocket short film that went on to be remade as his first feature. Created in 1993 and starring long-time collaborator Owen Wilson, visitors can watch the whole 14-minute cut in the exhibition gallery.

A number of Anderson’s spiral-bound notebooks in which the director records ideas are also shown. They feature a rare opportunity to uncover his creative process, from the earliest inspirations for his films and characters, to ideas for scripts and sketches of scenes in his characteristic handwriting.

Dozens of costumes are on display, exploring Anderson’s careful collaboration with actors to craft characters through the ensembles they wear. Highlights include the Oscar-winning costumes from The Grand Budapest Hotel (for which Milena Canonero received the Academy Award for Costume Design in 2014) and much-loved characters including Moses Rosenthaler’s costume (worn by Benicio del Toro) in The French Dispatch (2021), Max Fischer’s Rushmore Academy uniform from Rushmore, and the full ensembles of the Zissou crew from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Costumes worn by Waris Ahluwalia, Ralph Fiennes, Seu Jorge, Scarlett Johansson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Ben Stiller, Tilda Swinton, Owen Wilson and Jeffrey Wright will all be on show.

The sections devoted to the stop motion films Fantastic Mr Fox (2009) and Isle of Dogs (2018) delve into Wes Anderson’s highly crafted miniature worlds. Visitors will discover a large selection of original puppets in various scales, including Mr Fox (voiced by George Clooney) wearing his signature corduroy suit and show dog Nutmeg (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) alongside the meticulously built miniature sets.

A major thread woven through the show is the story of the collaborative approach that makes Anderson’s work possible. On display will be works by many of these key long-standing creative partners, including Eric Chase Anderson, Javi Aznarez, Milena Canonero, Roman Coppola, Alexandre Desplat, Erica Dorn, Mark Friedberg, Andy Gent, Juman Malouf, Roger Do Minh, Sylvia Plachy, Carl Sprague, Adam Stockhausen, Simon Weisse and Laura Wilson.

As well as finished props and sets, the exhibition features work-in-progress material and maquettes, and it will look at the variety of traditional and hand-made film-making techniques that the director continues to celebrate through his work, especially connected to puppets and stop motion animation.

Wes Anderson’s archives

Anderson has kept items from his films for nearly thirty years, and he has amassed thousands of varied objects. This exhibition is the first time the archives have been displayed, with the vast majority of items having been in storage ever since they were first used on their respective film sets.

Almost uniquely as a filmmaker, Anderson builds his filmic worlds by ensuring that what is seen on screen is conceived and crafted as a ‘real’ object. Although visible only for few seconds, these are much more than mere props and Anderson himself is closely involved in the commission and creation of each one.

Anderson’s meticulous collecting of these items began when he realised that everything that had been made for Bottle Rocket was owned and then sold off by the film’s production company. So, from his second feature film — Rushmore — he personally took care of every item after shooting concluded, ensuring he was the guardian of all items crafted for each movie.