A major career retrospective on filmmaker Tim Burton (American, b. 1958) will consist of a gallery exhibition, and a film series.  It will consider Burton’s career as a director, producer, writer, and animator of live-action and animated films, and his work as a fiction writer and illustrator.  It will narrate the evolution of his creative practices, following the current of his visual imagination from his earliest childhood drawing through his mature work. Taking inspiration from sources in pop culture, Burton has reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking as a spiritual experience, and influenced a generation of young artists working in film, video, and graphics. 

The gallery exhibition will focus on work generated during the process of conception, development, and production of his films, and will cover Burton’s realized and unrealized projects.  It will include works on paper and sculpted in various mediums, as well as work in digital and moving-image formats such as concept art, production designs, drawn and painted animation art, 3-D models, puppets and maquettes, script treatments, storyboards, screen tests, and other audio-visual components, and examples of his work as a graphic artist for his non-film projects.  Burton’s films include Vincent (1982), Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985), Beetlejuice (1988), Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Ed Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Corpse Bride (2005), and Sweeney Todd (2007); writing and web projects include The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories (1997), and Stainboy (2000).  The exhibition is organized by Steven Higgins, Curator; Ron Magliozzi, Assistant Curator; and Jenny He, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art.