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# Es Devlin: Other Worlds Opens Her 30-Year Archive at the Design Museum
- URL: https://www.unknowndivide.com/es-devlin-other-worlds-design-museum/
- Published: 2026-10-07T11:17:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-07T11:21:27.000Z
- Description: The stage designer behind Super Bowl and stadium tour sets gets her first European retrospective, with a replica of her studio, a 30-Year Desk of models and her biggest archive show yet. On now in London.
- Author: unknowndivide staff
- Tags: Design, Culture

If you have watched a stadium tour, an Olympic ceremony or a Super Bowl halftime show in the last decade, there is a good chance you have seen Es Devlin's work without knowing her name. She is also the designer who put three actors in a revolving glass box and let them play an entire banking dynasty in *The Lehman Trilogy*. Now the London artist and designer has her first retrospective in Europe, and the [Design Museum's *Es Devlin: Other Worlds*](https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/es-devlin-other-worlds?ref=unknowndivide.com) is open now through April 4, 2027.

Devlin, whose first name is short for Esmeralda, has spent 30 years working across sculpture, stage design, music, language and light. This show tries to put all of that in one building, and it was conceived and designed in close collaboration with her, so it feels less like a museum hang and more like walking into her head.

## What is inside

The museum calls it the largest solo presentation of her archive to date, and the highlights read like a tour of her brain:

- **Her studio, rebuilt.** A detailed replica of Devlin's London studio, filled with her books, objects and maquettes, the small scale models she uses to plan every set.
- **Archive Unboxed.** A wall of early sketches, paintings, collages, diaries and prints from school, university and art college onward, showing how every project she has made starts as a drawing.
- **The 30-Year Desk.** The centerpiece, a large circular display built for the gallery. It references her set for *The Lehman Trilogy* (2018), the *Forest of Us* installation shown in Miami in 2021, the London 2012 Olympic Games Closing Ceremony, the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show and the kinetic stage sculptures she has built for concert tours.
- **Come Home Again.** Her sculptural shrine to endangered wildlife, redisplayed in a new arrangement.
- **Infinite Library.** A book installation stocked by Penguin Random House UK. When the show closes, every book goes to local charities for the National Year of Reading.

Those tours, for the record, include some of the biggest live shows of the past decade, for artists such as Beyoncé, Adele and U2\. Devlin's trick has always been the same: one huge, simple idea, a cube, a ring, a mirror, a forest, built so precisely that a stadium feels intimate.

## How to go

The Design Museum is on Kensington High Street, next to Holland Park. Adult tickets start at £17.09, students and concessions from £12.82 and children from £8.55, and members go free. The show opens with a short film and entry runs in 15-minute timed slots, so book ahead rather than turning up. The museum is fully closed on Tuesday, October 13.

If you can only make one night of it, Devlin is in conversation with chief curator Johanna Agerman Ross at [An Evening with Es Devlin](https://designmuseum.org/whats-on/talks-courses-and-workshops/an-evening-with-es-devlin?ref=unknowndivide.com) on Tuesday, December 8 at 7 p.m.

## The book to get

Not flying to London? The best way to take this home is the new [A Concise Atlas of Es Devlin](https://www.amazon.com/dp/050029920X?tag=unknowndivi02-20&ref=unknowndivide.com), a new version of her 2023 *An Atlas of Es Devlin*, published by [Thames & Hudson](https://www.thamesandhudson.com/products/a-concise-atlas-of-es-devlin?ref=unknowndivide.com) to coincide with the exhibition. The Design Museum describes it as an updated, compact edition with brand new essays, interviews and contributions, built around the sketches, paper cuts and cardboard models that seed her big projects. It doubles as one of the better gifts you can give anyone who works in design, theater or music. The Design Museum also sells it through its [shop](https://designmuseumshop.com/products/es-devlin-exhibition-book?ref=unknowndivide.com) for £30 if you want to collect it on the day.

For more books that belong on the same shelf, see our list of [design books every designer should own](https://www.unknowndivide.com/best-design-books-every-designer-should-own/) and our [gifts for design lovers](https://www.unknowndivide.com/gifts-for-design-lovers/). And for another big show built around one artist's private world, read our take on [RM x SFMOMA](https://www.unknowndivide.com/rm-x-sfmoma-between-you-and-me/).

Thirty years of sets that move, light that talks and drawings that started it all. This is the design show of the fall.

[Book tickets at the Design Museum](https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/es-devlin-other-worlds?ref=unknowndivide.com) · [The exhibition book](https://designmuseumshop.com/products/es-devlin-exhibition-book?ref=unknowndivide.com)

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