The Design Museum in London has unveiled costumes, props, and other ephemera from Wes Anderson’s personal archives as part of an exhibition showcasing the design behind each of his films.
Wes Anderson: The Archives is spread out over several rooms on the ground floor of the Design Museum.
Each displays an assortment of original objects and artwork used in the director’s films, including a jaguar-printed shark from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and a scale model hotel from the Grand Budapest Hotel.
For the exhibition, curators Lucia Savi and Johanna Agerman Ross worked closely with Anderson to comb through his extensive personal archive in Kent to select the objects, many of which have never been shown before.
“The exhibition features over 700 objects, and it’s spread out over 14 sections,” said Agerman Ross. “All pieces are largely drawn from Wes Anderson’s own archive, as well as some key loans from others, including the Disney archives.”
“It is such a tremendous moment for us to be able to reveal many of these objects for the first time, such as the jaguar shark,” she added.
Designer Ab Rogers led the exhibition design, which displays Anderson’s movies in chronological order against a backdrop of red tones.
The walls start off with a cherry red for Anderson’s first full-length film, Bottle Rocket, and conclude in a dusty pink that corresponds to Astroid City.
Rogers told Dezeen that he used the tones, as well as “architectural partitioning” as major organising elements in the exhibition, including small windows that peek into the next section of the show.
“We needed to create a universe of all his worlds to sit inside,” Rogers told Dezeen. “Using colour and architectural partitioning seems to be the key thing, so we can hide things and reveal things.”
“It’s a continuous story, in a way, and each film is influenced by the next film and the next.”
The first few rooms display objects from Anderson’s early career, when he got started after growing up in Houston, Texas. Ephemera from Bottle Rocket, which he made with long-term collaborators Owen and Luke Wilson, include sketches of a storyboard, and behind-the-scenes photography from the Wilson’s photographer mother.
The exhibition then moves on to films such as Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, with original costumes on display and, then the silicone, mechanised jaguar shark and bright blue costumes from The Life Aquatic.
The centre of the exhibition is dedicated to Anderson’s stop-motion work and displays models of characters from Fantastic Mr Fox and The Isle of Dogs in an assortment of sizes.
The only non-chronological section, the exhibition team created the section to highlight local Anderson’s puppet work at 3 Mills Studios in East London, where he filmed both movies.
Finally, the exhibition displays a model train and other objects from Asteroid City and just a few objects from the Phoenician Scheme, Anderson’s most recent movie.
Agerman Ross told Dezeen there’s some possibility that the exhibition could expand in the coming years, as Anderson completes other movies.
“For Anderson, it was a wonderful opportunity to reacquaint himself with some of the many objects that he hasn’t seen for a long time,” she told Dezeen. “It’s the first time that it is all together.”
“It’s for him, obviously, a moving experience.”
Previously, Dezeen spoke with production designers from The Phoenician Scheme and Asteroid City on their work for each films.
The photography is by Luke Hayes.
Wes Anderson: The Archives is on view from 21 November 2025 – 26 July 2026. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
