Friday, May 19, 2006

Smithsonian Institute Displays Henson Treasures

A very special Muppet exhibit opened today at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, located in Washington DC. The exhibit, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Muppets, is entitled "Muppets and Mechanisms: Jim Henson’s Legacy" and includes two exciting displays honoring the work of Jim Henson. The exhibits opened today (May 19, 2006) and will run until September 4, 2006.

Many one-of-a-kind objects from the Henson Company are displayed on the museum’s first and third floors and represent two important eras and achievements in Henson’s extraordinary career -- the fleece-and-foam Muppet characters, and the technologically intricate animatronic creatures.

The first floor display includes many original animatronic creatures, including figures from "Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas", "The Dark Crystal" and others.

The third floor display includes some of the original "Sam and Friends" puppets created by Jim Henson in 1955, the original Kermit the Frog (famously made from a green felt coat discarded by Jim's mother), another Kermit puppet from 1969, an early Rowlf the Dog puppet, the Swedish Chef, Dr. Teeth, and the banjo player from the Country Trio (which is the Muppet that resembles Jim Henson himself).

If you are in the Washington area this summer, be sure to take some time to stop by the National Museum of American History to see these one of a kind Henson artifacts and displays up-close and in person.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great exhibit - saw it today. The blog entry had it reversed. Dark Crystal and Emmet are on the first floor, the others on the third floor.

Rob

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the correction, Rob. I must have accidentally flipped the third and first floors' information when typing out the news post. I fixed it.

I'm glad to hear you saw the exhibit and enjoyed it. There are some incredible things there -- I highly recommend the exhibit. I plan on making the trek to D.C. a few more times this summer to see the Henson Treasures (and other stuff) again.

Anonymous said...

The Smithsonian website has a lot of info about the exhibit, including a lot of pictures. In fact, there's more information on the website than in the actual exhibit, although the actual exhibit has of course the benefit of having the Muppets themselves.

It was a much smaller exhibit than I expected after seeing the website.