Guests watch a slideshow of drawings created by director Tim Burton that will be included in his upcoming exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.Guests watch a slideshow of drawings created by director Tim Burton that will be included in his upcoming exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. (Associated Press)

While filmgoers have experienced Tim Burton's characteristic dark but vibrant, off-beat and whimsical vision in his movies for many years, museumgoers will have a chance to see his artwork starting this fall.

New York's Museum of Modern Art has announced a vast, wide-ranging career retrospective dedicated to the Burbank, Calif.-born, London-based filmmaker beginning in November.

At a news conference announcing the exhibit, the 50-year-old Burton described being the subject of the forthcoming show as "very surreal, very surprising" and an "out-of-body" experience.

"I didn't grow up in a real museum culture," Burton told reporters in New York Wednesday.

"I think I went to the Hollywood Wax Museum as my first museum … I was of that generation where I got more out of The Beverly Hillbillies than Monet."

The MoMA show will encompass more than 700 items, ranging from never-before-seen paintings, drawings and storyboards to video work Burton has created over the years.

Being the subject of an upcoming Museum of Modern Art exhibit is 'very surreal, very surprising,' said director Tim Burton. Being the subject of an upcoming Museum of Modern Art exhibit is 'very surreal, very surprising,' said director Tim Burton. (Francois Mori/Associated Press)

The display will include, for instance, Burton's ink sketches from Edward Scissorhands, his watercolour paintings from The Nightmare Before Christmas and his little-seen student artwork and early non-professional films.

Other Burton movie items — ranging from puppets from Corpse Bride to costumes from Sleepy Hollow to props from Mars Attacks! — will also be featured. In late November, the museum will host screenings 14 of his major feature films, which such varied fare as Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Ed Wood, Big Fish and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

The exhibit will offer "an intimate experience of Burton's sensibility — undiluted, provocative and humorous," Museum of Modern Art director Glenn Lowry said, according to Reuters.

"His doodles, sketches, drawings and paintings are the raw material from which he draws inspiration as a filmmaker."

Tim Burton runs at the Museum of Modern Art from Nov. 22 through April 26, 2010.