Over 200 whisky collectors, gallery owners, photographers, designers, artists and art influencers attended the launch night of Imaginarium: The Fantastical World of Compass Box and Stranger & Stranger at The Wolfsonian–FIU, a restored Art Deco museum in Miami on Wednesday 3 Dec, 2025.
Compass Box’s first ever immersive art exhibition launched during Art Basel this year offering guests a deep dive into the world of Compass Box, with exhibits blending physical and digital objects to visualise the imaginative worlds behind their most iconic whiskies. The exhibition coincides with the brand’s 25th anniversary and will run until mid-January 2026. Attendees included Avalon Ashley Bellos, an international Art Dealer, international photography and directing duo Maruska and Donna-Marie Mason, contemporary street artist Ivan Roque, entrepreneur Nijel B. Murray and Bianca Lilli Espinosa aka TheScotchGirl.
The show features their work with longtime design collaborators Stranger & Stranger — the world-renowned agency behind their distinctive labels. Through these visuals, they invite visitors to step “into the worlds” of each expression, making whisky as much about imagination and design as taste.
Compass Box’s Racheal Vaughan Jones says,
“For our 25th anniversary, we wanted to celebrate everything that is so unique to Compass Box. Back in 2000, we invented the word ‘whiskymaker’ because we believed that what we were doing was about so much more than just the liquid in the bottle. The art on the labels and the entire worlds that Stranger & Stranger evoke is a huge part of that, and so it felt like the perfect time to celebrate this milestone together. We were overwhelmed with the response to the Private View, especially as this is such a busy time at Miami Art Week – the queue to get in was all the way down the street. We wildlysurpassed the number of guests we thought would attend and it just shows how strongly Compass Box resonated with the creative crowd during Art Basel. The response means that we hope to bring Imaginarium to a city near you soon – watch this space! Thisexhibition was a way of celebrating the mastery and imagination behind this brand, but most importantly, it has sparked the creative fuse for the next 25 years.
Guests were gifted a one-off bespoke blend called IMAGINARIUM, composed of many of the archive whiskies on display, and created especially in honour of the event. Specially created highball cocktails were made with Compass Box’s Orchard House alongside serves of recent release Brûlée Royale.
Angela D’Orazio, the brand’s new Creative Director of Whiskymaking says,
“We invented the word whiskymaker because blending alone couldn’t explain what we were doing. Stranger & Stranger helped us build entire worlds. Now, for the first time, we’re opening the doors and letting people walk directly into them.”
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Ivan Wilson-Bell, Group CEO and Managing Director at Stranger & Stranger says,
“Each label we craft with Compass Box is its own universe. This exhibition is the first time all those universes collide. It feels like a celebration of everything we’ve imagined together.”
Compass Box hopes to take the Imaginarium: The Fantastical World of Compass Box and Stranger & Stranger on tour in 2026. On Wednesday 10 December, Bonhams will auction a one-off blend – Confluence, the very first whisky created by D’Orazio in her new role. The whisky is described on Bonham’s site as a ‘crown jewel one-off blend’ and is estimated to reach upwards of $10,000.
