Vogue

The Oscar-winning filmmaker consulted religious paintings for her tableau, hoping to evoke feelings of shock, confusion, and wonder in museumgoers.

At Mount Holyoke College, she considered studying production design for theater instead of political science, and before that, at her British boarding school, she built “little stages for Shakespeare plays” in design class. “I love musicals, and that one was really huge for me,” she says with a chuckle, calling in from Los Angeles. In one sense, Zhao approached the project in the same way she would a film.