MINNEAPOLIS.- The Minneapolis Institute of Art presents an exhibition offering a rare glimpse into the mind and creative workings of famed filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. Del Toro’s first museum retrospective, “Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters,” is on view at Mia March 5 to May 28, 2017. The exhibition reveals the creative process behind del Toro’s singular vision by bringing together elements from his films, objects from his vast personal collections, and drawings from his notebooks, alongside objects del Toro has selected from Mia’s permanent collection.

Conceived and initiated by Mia and co-organized with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), “At Home with Monsters” features a diverse range of media, including sculpture, paintings, prints, photography, costumes, ancient artifacts, books, maquettes, and film. More than 500 objects are being featured.

“This exhibition is the latest in a series at Mia exploring process and inspiration as the cornerstones of human creativity,” said Gabriel Ritter, Mia’s curator of Contemporary Art and site curator of the exhibition. “Del Toro’s insatiable curiosity drives his creative process. His work is informed by his remarkable knowledge of art, literature, and his sensitivity to the inherently flawed nature of humankind. At the same time, he finds inspiration, nourishment, and wonder in objects of all kinds, seeing no divide between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture.”

Said del Toro: “To find beauty in the profane. To elevate the banal. To be moved by genre. These things are vital for my storytelling. This exhibition presents a small fraction of the things that have moved me, inspired me, and consoled me as I transit through life. It’s a devotional sampling of the enormous love that is required to create, maintain, and love the monsters in our lives.”

Exhibition Themes and Highlights
The exhibition is organized into eight thematic sections:

• Childhood and Innocence, exploring the central role children play in many of del Toro’s films;

• Victoriana, which loosely references the Romantic, Victorian, and Edwardian ages, as well as latter-day interpretations of the Victorian era;

• Rain Room, a recreation of a favorite spot in Bleak House, the suburban Los Angeles home that houses del Toro’s personal collection, featuring a false window and special effects to simulate a perpetual thunderstorm—the best atmosphere for del Toro’s creative process;

• Magic, Alchemy, and the Occult, exploring the many puzzles, talismans, secret keys, and quests for forbidden knowledge that appear in del Toro’s films;

• Movies, Comics, and Pop Culture, delving into the scope of del Toro’s obsession with comic books and cinema, from B-movies and horror films to works by directors Alfred Hitchcock and Luis Buñuel;

• Frankenstein and Horror, revealing del Toro’s lifelong love affair with the tale of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster;

• Freaks and Monsters, considering del Toro’s fascination with monsters of all types, from those found in horror movies to those in nature, literature, myth, and art; and

• Death and the Afterlife, which speaks to the disturbing confrontations with death that del Toro experienced as a child, and the use of fantasy in his work to explore spirituality.

An original soundtrack by Academy Award-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla accompanies the exhibition.