An exhibition featuring the art of filmmaker Tim Burton opens at Toronto's Bell Lightbox this week.
These artifacts are positioned to lure passers-by into Tim Burton, a revamped version of the Museum of Modern Art’s blockbuster exhibition exploring the 52-year-old American filmmaker’s art and career – and a show with monster-sized expectations.
While the original New York exhibition – curated by Rajendra Roy, Ron Magliozzi and Jenny He of MoMA’s film department – drew mixed reviews from art critics when it opened a year ago, it brought in hundreds of thousands of visitors, becoming the museum’s third most popular exhibition, behind only its retrospectives on Matisse (1992) and Picasso (1980).
Running until April 17, Tim Burton: The Exhibition is the first show from MoMA to come to Toronto in more than 20 years. As the second major exhibit at Lightbox, the new home of the Toronto International Film Festival, a lot is riding on this whirlwind tour of Burton’s brain. The hope is to entice other cultural organizations to partner with the venue to bring in more shows like this.
Burton is amazed that curators, intent on documenting the evolution of his trick-or-treat imagination, have so methodically pulled together so much of his artwork, ranging from conceptual drawings for films to highly expressive personal work.
“I don’t know where they found those things,” says Burton half-jokingly. The collection was amassed from Burton’s collaborators, collectors and Burton’s own rag-tag archive (i.e. drawers stuffed with drawings at the American movie director’s home base in London).
