Wes Anderson Is Combing Through ‘An Embarrassment of Riches’ For Curatorial Debut in Vienna

Following our report earlier this year that the filmmaker Wes Anderson and the novelist and costume designer Juman Malouf (Anderson’s partner) were set to curate a show at Vienna’s celebrated Kunsthistorisches Museum, the art history institution has issued further details for ‘The Spitzmaus Mummy in a Coffin and Other Treasures from the Kunsthistorisches Museum’, opening in November.

In a new museum trailer, curator Jasper Sharp offers a taste of the artworks and artefacts that have caught Anderson and Malouf’s attention. The duo were given ‘a very special but somewhat overwhelming invitation’ to comb through the museum’s collection, from ancient Egyptian mummies to Greek and Roman treasures, right through to Old Masters and even the crown jewels.

The show will be ‘quite unlike anything we have ever done before’ Sharp says, sorting through ‘an embarrassment of riches’. The museum remains tight-lipped on what exactly Anderson and Malouf are planning – it will be the first show that the duo have curated. ‘Come and find out,’ Sharp says. The show runs from 6 November 2018 to 28 April 2019.

The museum also plans for the exhibition to later travel to Venice, going on show at the Fondazione Prada. Anderson and Malouf’s project is the third in a series of guest curators invited by the Kunsthistorisches Museum – following collaborations with Ed Ruscha in 2012 and Edmund de Waal in 2016. ‘Their approach to the selection of objects and the method of their display seems certain to produce something most unexpected,’ Sharp told us earlier this year.