Tim Burton at MoMA

From Edward Scissorhands to Jack Skellington, the characters in many of Tim Burton’s films reflect the alienation he felt as a child in suburban Burbank, California. The Burton exhibit on display at the Museum of Modern Art echoes this sense of isolation through its content – one set of drawings is titled “Little Dead Riding Hood”– and in its placement in the same building as Monet.

Red-and-white-striped monsters created by a film director that does not consider himself an artist by trade may seem out of place in MoMA. But Burton’s skill in several media – an oil painting of a wolf howling at the moon recalls the swirls of “Starry Night” and detail-oriented pencil drawings of the Martian brain look more like finished pieces than sketches – should convince visitors otherwise.

Unfortunately, curators Ron Magliozzi, Jenny He and Rajendra Roy undermine the respect a MoMA exhibit demonstrates with poor organization of the artwork. Burton’s work seems, at first, to be divided chronologically, though there is little direction for visitors looking for progression in his work. Placards with years and descriptors about the mostly untitled works, correspond only haphazardly to where the pieces actually hung on the wall, and the full walls overwhelm instead of welcome.

After several walls of morbidly funny drawings with hand-written captions like “Whipping a cow for whipped cream,” another room changes the exhibit’s focus from Burton, the artist to Burton, Hollywood phenomenon. A platform displaying movie props, like the white sweater from “Ed Wood,” is essential for Burton’s cult following, as are the sketches of characters from “Batman,” “Sweeney Todd” and others that hang on the surrounding walls. However, the awe they inspire diminishes the disclosure of Burton’s never-before-seen art – and the creations of the lonely boy from Burbank continue being ignored.