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The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Thursday announced two new flagship exhibitions opening in Spring 2025.
AMPAS’ Los Angeles Museum will host both Director’s Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho, and Barbie to Anna Karenina: The Cinematic Worlds of Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer, exploring the work of the Oscar-nominated production design team behind films like Barbie (2023), Anna Karenina (2012), and Beauty and the Beast (2017).
Director’s Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho is the first museum exhibition dedicated to the internationally acclaimed, Oscar-winning film director. In a continuation of the Academy Museum’s Director’s Inspiration series, the exhibition spotlights Bong Joon Ho’s creative process, filmography, and cinematic influences.
Whether set in 1980s Korea or an imagined future time and space, Bong Joon Ho’s films address issues that are transnational and universal: class disparity, social injustice, the environmental crisis, and political and moral corruption. His protagonists are everyday people—unlikely heroes—who confront the absurdities of modern life. From his earliest short films to his international breakthrough, The Host (2006), through the Oscar-winning Parasite (2019), Bong Joon Ho’s work defies simple categorization, embedding social critique into deeply humorous, unexpected, and thought-provoking stories.
The exhibition will feature over 100 original objects including storyboards, research materials, film posters, concept art, creature models, props, and on-set photographs. At the center of the exhibition is a space designed to reflect Director Bong’s creative workspace, which includes select objects spanning his filmography.
Director’s Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho is curated by Exhibitions Curator Michelle Puetz, with the support of Assistant Curator Nicholas Barlow, Research Assistants Josue Lopez and Jeongsil Yoon, and former Getty Marrow Curatorial Intern Janice Kim. The exhibition runs from March 23, 2025–January 10, 2027.
Barbie to Anna Karenina: The Cinematic Worlds of Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer is an immersive and experiential look at one of the most distinctive production design teams working today. The exhibition explores how Greenwood and Spencer develop the overall look and visual concept of a movie, and how they collaborate to create unique environments and settings that convey time, place, and character. Visitors will have the opportunity to learn about the impact of production designers and set decorators on a film and will leave with a greater understanding and knowledge of their work.
The exhibit will be divided into four galleries—three featuring Greenwood and Spencer’s work on the films Anna Karenina (2012), Beauty and the Beast (2017), and Barbie (2023). Each gallery invites visitors to step into the design world for these films and explores Greenwood and Spencer’s process through key props and pre-production materials. A final gallery showcases Greenwood and Spencer’s creative process through a recreation of their studio space as it looked during their work on the film Barbie.
Greenwood and Spencer have worked together for more than 25 years on over 20 feature films. Together, they have been nominated for seven Oscars for their films starting with Pride & Prejudice in 2005, followed by Atonement (2007), Sherlock Holmes (2010), Anna Karenina (2012), Beauty and the Beast (2017), and Darkest Hour (2017). They received their seventh Academy Award nomination for their creation of the pink-hued universe of writer-director Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023).
Barbie to Anna Karenina: The Cinematic Worlds of Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer is curated by Exhibitions Curator Michelle Puetz, with the support of Curatorial Assistants Simran Bhalla and Alexandra James Salichs and former Curatorial Assistant Manouchka Labouba. The exhibition runs from May 23, 2025–October 25, 2026.
