Guadalajara-born fantasy and horror director Guillermo del Toro is set to share his vast collection of bizarre curiosities in a new exhibition that will travel to seven major cities, including Mexico City, Los Angeles and Paris.
The Pan’s Labyrinth director says that he loves monsters “like people love puppies,” and he keeps his macabre collection in a personal Los Angeles museum, which he calls “Bleak House,” after the Charles Dickens novel. The extensive collection features the books, art, and life-size statues which he has accumulated over the years.
“This morning I woke up in the Dickens room, which is a room that is dedicated to Dickens, and all the furniture is Dickensian and Victorian, and it’s surrounded by books from the Victorian era,” the eccentric director said. “And I exited through the Nosferatu corridor by pushing the secret painting on the wall into my kitchen.”
The tour will begin in Los Angeles in July and from November it will move on to Minneapolis, Toronto, Mexico City, Barcelona, Paris and finally New York. The exhibition will be organized around themes such as death and the afterlife, occultism, monsters, horror and redemption. A video, “Welcome to Bleak House,” in which Del Toro gives a tour of his personal collection has more than 200,000 views on YouTube.