Es Devlin will open her first European retrospective at the Design Museum this autumn, bringing together three decades of work across sculpture, stage design, music, language and light.
Opening on 2nd October 2026, Es Devlin: Other Worlds will feature artworks, installations and film alongside the largest solo presentation of Devlin’s archive to date. Conceived and designed in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition will transform the museum into an immersive journey through a practice that has moved from small-scale theatre to museums, opera houses, arenas and stadiums around the world.
Tim Marlow, Director and CEO of the Design Museum, said:
“Our exhibitions at the Design Museum often explore what might best be called ‘design in an expanded field’, a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary approach which breaks down many of the boundaries around creative practice. Es Devlin shares this ethos. Her remarkable boundary-blurring work across art, activism, poetry, sculpture, music and architecture is the embodiment of enlightened design thinking and her emphasis on collective experience and audience participation makes this exhibition one of the most exciting and ambitious to be staged in our galleries.”
The exhibition begins with a replica of Devlin’s South London studio, complete with books, objects, maquettes, drawings, tools and paints. A projection-mapped film narrated by Devlin will bring the space to life before visitors move into the wider exhibition and the projects that emerged from it.
“I am moving my studio and practically my entire 30-year archive into the Design Museum for this show,”
Devlin said.
“It’s an immense privilege to have this opportunity to share my working process and practice with visitors and to create a new large-scale installation.”
Among the major works returning to London is Come Home Again, first presented outside Tate Modern in 2022. Originally conceived as a cross-section of the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral filled with illuminated cut-out drawings of endangered moths, birds, beetles, wildflowers, fish and fungi, the work will be reimagined in a new constellation created specifically for the Design Museum.
At the centre of the exhibition will be 30-Year Desk, a newly conceived installation of concentric circular desks filled with hundreds of objects from Devlin’s archive. Concept drawings, photographs, personal objects and ephemera will sit alongside more than 30 intricate models from her design process, many of which have never previously been shown in Britain.
The projects represented range from Devlin’s set design for The Lehman Trilogy and her Forest of Us installation in Miami to the London 2012 Olympic Games Closing Ceremony, the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show and kinetic stage sculptures created for some of the world’s biggest musicians.
Running along the gallery walls, Archive Unboxed will trace another strand of Devlin’s practice through early sketches, paintings, collages, diaries and prints made at school, university and art college, as well as drawings produced throughout her career. Together, they reveal the central role drawing continues to play in the development of her work.
Johanna Agerman Ross, Conran Foundation Chief Curator at the Design Museum and curator of the exhibition, said:
“Visitors will be able to step inside a mesmerising creative landscape at the Design Museum this autumn, one that has been crafted from three decades of Es Devlin’s boundary-pushing work. It has been a huge joy to explore Es’ archive alongside her, and to shine a light on how and why she builds the worlds that she does.”
Exhibition curated by Johanna Agerman Ross and Danielle Thom with Margherita Dosi Delfini at the Design Museum, and in close collaboration with Es Devlin and her studio.
Es Devlin: Other Worlds, 2nd October 2026 — 4th April 2027, the Design Museum
Published to coincide with the exhibition will be A Concise Atlas of Es Devlin, a new version of 2023’s volume An Atlas Of Es Devlin. It will be published by Thames & Hudson.
The digital guide to Es Devlin: Other Worlds will be available exclusively on Bloomberg Connects. The guide will offer fresh perspectives on Devlin’s work and career through insights from the artist. It will go live when the exhibition opens, on the Design Museum’s Bloomberg Connects guide.
