LAIKA presents WILDWOOD: The Exhibition
15 October 2026 – 10 January 2027
the Design Museum | Helene and Johannes Huth Gallery and Mezzanine
The Design Museum today announces LAIKA presents WILDWOOD: The Exhibition, a new exhibition made in collaboration with Portland based stop-motion animation studio LAIKA, exploring the design and making of their forthcoming film Wildwood.
Opening on 15 October 2026, the exhibition will coincide with the international release of LAIKA’s latest stop motion adventure, Wildwood, directed by Travis Knight, offering visitors a rare opportunity to discover the film’s creative journey as it arrives on screen. After 20 years of masterminding animated cinematic classics, including the likes of Coraline (2009) and Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), the film encompasses two decades of the studio’s ground-breaking approach to stop-motion filmmaking.
The exhibition will offer visitors a behind-the-scenes look at the creative and technical processes involved in building a stop-motion world. It brings together original creative material, production objects, costumes, film-making tools, audiovisual content and interactive installations, and will reveal the work of the visual development artists, model makers, scenic painters, and more.
Focusing on Wildwood, the exhibition will trace the development of the film from early ideas and visual research through to character and environmental design, costume, puppet fabrication, rapid prototyping, miniature set construction, animation and cinematography.
LAIKA’s films are created by stop motion, the cinematic practice of photographing real, three-dimensional objects in constructed environments, with puppets moved incrementally between frames. The exhibition will examine how handcraft and technology work together across this process, from intricate costumes and mechanical armatures to miniature sets, animation rigs, lighting and camera techniques.
It will also present stop-motion as a multidisciplinary design practice, demonstrating how storytelling emerges through collaboration across design, engineering, making and technology. By revealing the breadth of careers involved in bringing a stop-motion feature to life, the exhibition also aims to inspire future generations to see animation not only as an artform, but as a viable and rewarding creative career path.
Wildwood will be released by Black Bear in UK and Irish cinemas on October 23.