“Fondazione Prada presents ‘Wes Anderson – Asteroid City: Exhibition’ in Milan from September 23, 2023 to January 7, 2024, in collaboration with Universal Pictures International Italy. The show anticipates the Italian theatrical release on September 28, 2023 of Asteroid City, the latest film by Wes Anderson. On view at Fondazione Prada’s Nord gallery, the project includes a selection of original sets, props, miniatures, costumes, and artworks featured in this movie, which premiered in the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. These immersive installations transport audiences into the creative universe of Anderson’s eleventh feature film. Asteroid City takes place in 1955 in a fictional American desert town famous for its meteor crater and celestial observatory. It narrates a convention of young astronomers and space cadets, bringing together students and parents from across the country and spectacularly disrupted by mysterious events that will change the world.” — Fondazione Prada
As commented by Wes Anderson, “My personal wish might be to have every prop and costume we ever made for all our movies transferred into the Fondazione Prada to live there indefinitely for all time (if they could spare us the space). Rem Koolhaas also designed one of my very favorite cinemas in the world right in the middle of it.”
Exhibition views of “Wes Anderson – Asteroid City: Exhibition” at Fondazione Prada, Milan. Photos: Delfino Sisto Legnani – DSL Studio. Courtesy: Fondazione Prada.
“Asteroid City was filmed in Spain, on the outskirts of Chinchón, a small centre in the Community of Madrid. The sets were designed by longtime Anderson collaborator Adam Stockhausen (Oscar® winner for The Grand Budapest Hotel, 2014). For Anderson and Stockhausen, a significant inspiration for the look of the landscape and the urban spaces was Bad Day at Black Rock, the 1955 film directed by John Sturges and starring Spencer Tracy. Other key design references included Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (1951) and Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), as well as Frank Capra’s classic It Happened One Night (1934). The buildings and their interiors, all landscape elements —including mountains, boulders, and rocks— which spectators see on the screen, were all physically constructed on a big scale and laid out in a way that gave the actors and crew the sense of living in a real, perfectly functioning town.” — Fondazione Prada
Title image: Wes Anderson on the set of Asteroid City. Courtesy of Roger Do Minh/Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features. Courtesy Fondazione Prada.