“At Home with Monsters” highlights the weird and wonderful oddities from Guillermo del Toro's private collection

Guillermo del Toro -- the visionary director of Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy, Pacific Rim, Mimic and Crimson Peak -- has always had a soft spot for monsters. This is evident in his home, where wax statues of Frankenstein mingle with surreal artwork, original storyboards and fantastical props from his own movies. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) convinced del Toro to part with about 500 of his favorite pieces so he could share them with the public in a traveling exhibit called "At Home with Monsters."

"To find beauty in the profane, to elevate the banal, to be moved by genre: these things are vital for my storytelling," said del Toro at a press day for the event last weekend. "This exhibition presents a small fraction of the things that have moved me, inspired me and consoled me as I transit through life. It's a devotional sampling of the enormous love that is required to create, maintain and love monsters in our lives."

Visitors to the appropriately labyrinth-like exhibit can expect to see life-sized wax figures of Frankenstein, Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft as well as characters from his own movies, like Pan's Labyrinth. Around every corner is another unusual sculpture, painting, print, photo, costume, ancient artifact, book or other object that is precious to the director and on display in his home.

"At Home with Monsters" is open to the public at LACMA from August 1 until November 27. After that, the exhibit will travel to the Minneapolis Institute of Art (February 26-May 21, 2017) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (September 30, 2017-January 7, 2018) before del Toro is finally reunited with what he calls part of his "hoard." The collection is also detailed in a handsome coffee table book coming out at the end of August, Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters, which is available for pre-order now.

Imagine if this was your place? Guillermo del Toro's Los Angeles residence that he calls "Bleak House" (This and top image courtesy Josh White/JWpictures.com)

The Angel of Death from Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which greets you at the exhibit's entrance

Pan, from Pan's Labyrinth

Del Toro's favorite items are his Frankenstein figures. The movie touched him as a child, the idea of being an outsider.

Schlitzie and Half Boy (played by Johnny Eck) from the movie Freaks

For more details, see LACMA's site.