Guillermo Del Toro's Memorabilia Collection To Become a Museum Exhibit

Some people collect stamps, records, or rocks. Not Guillermo del Toro. The Mexican filmmaker—who’s directed macabre fantasy films like The Devil's Backbone (2001) and Pan's Labyrinth (2006) as well as blockbusters like Pacific Rim (2013) and the Hellboy franchise—has, over the course of several decades, amassed an entire household's worth of eclectic (and slightly creepy) memorabilia. (Think props from horror movies, books about the occult, and lots of fake skulls.) He displays them in a suburban Los Angeles home that he calls Bleak House after the Charles Dickens series of the same name.

This summer, del Toro’s fans will get to see some of these hair-raising keepsakes in person at the Los Angeles County Museum Of Art (LACMA), Remezcla reports. There, a new exhibit called Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters will showcase select items from Bleak House from July 31 through November 27. Later, the exhibit will travel to Minneapolis and Toronto.

According to a press release, “The exhibition explores del Toro’s creative process by bringing together elements from his films, objects from his vast personal collections, drawings from his notebooks, and approximately 60 objects from LACMA’s permanent collection. The diverse range of media—including sculpture, paintings, prints, photography, costumes, ancient artifacts, books, maquettes, and film—totals approximately 500 objects and reflects the broad scope of del Toro’s inspirations."

Last fall, del Toro took The New York Times on a tour of Bleak House, which he says serves as both a workplace and a source of visual inspiration. (A second home, Bleak House 2, sits next door, and is reportedly filled with even more items from del Toro's collection.) According to the director, the two houses boast more than 700 pieces of original art, along with several reference libraries, a Dickens-themed Victorian room, and countless ghoulish trinkets. “If we walk through the two houses, you would see not only the movies I’ve done, but the movies I’m going to do,” del Toro told The Times. “It’s everything I accumulated in my head as a young man, and it’s been coming out, slowly.”

Take a tour of del Toro’s house of horrors via the video above, courtesy of the Criterion Collection. 

[h/t Remezcla]

Banner image: YouTube