A Mecca for Muppet Fans
The Museum of the Moving Image honors Jim Henson.
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This week, however, will be a little different from the norm …
Any Muppet fans in the vicinity of New York City should get themselves to the Museum of the Moving Image.
The museum currently features The Jim Henson Exhibition. I visited it with my sister and niece earlier this month, and it is glorious. It’s got a bunch of Muppets on display, plus a wealth of behind-the-scenes artifacts. Not a bad place to spend an afternoon.
According to the museum’s website, the exhibit includes 47 puppets among nearly 300 items. It doesn’t have every last Muppet, but you can see Kermit, Miss Piggy, the Swedish Chef, Statler and Waldorf, Rowlf, a few Fraggles, and more.
Sesame Street characters are in the mix as well, including Big Bird and Cookie Monster. There’s even a corner dedicated to Henson’s fantasy movies, Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal.
Handwritten notes, original concept proposals, and other gems adorn the walls. The museum immerses you in joyful creativity. It’s as close as you can get to entering the minds of Jim Henson and his team, and it all makes a nice supplement to last year’s documentary. Or, more accurately, the documentary makes a nice supplement to this exhibit. There’s something special about seeing it with your own eyes, even through glass.
Best of all, there’s this little alcove where we could grab functional Muppet-type puppets and perform them while a silly song played. We could see our performance on a black-and-white TV right in front of us, in real time.
One hand operates the puppet’s face while the other operates a thin rod attached to one of the arms, and you’ve got to hold it above your head to remain off camera, just like the pros do it. Everyone gets to be a Muppeteer for a minute. I could have done that all day, but there was a line.
I can’t share any pictures of that since I’m not putting my niece on the internet, so here’s an index card outline of a Muppet Show episode instead.
The Museum of the Moving Image has other exhibits too. The top floor is dedicated to the Mission: Impossible movies until December. The stunts, naturally, dominate this exhibit. If you want to do a deep dive into how those stunts were shot, here’s the place to do it.
The museum’s core exhibit, Behind the Screen, displays a variety of fun artifacts. You can find classic arcade consoles in one area and vintage toys in another.
For example, 1970s Stars Wars toys fill multiple display cases, and not too far away, you can see the merchandising that accompanied the original releases of Snow White and Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio. And I’m really just scratching the surface here.
They’ve even got prosthetic masks of famous actors, including two of Robin Williams from when he filmed Mrs. Doubtfire—not only his Mrs. Doubtfire face but his natural one as well. And there’s no mistaking that it’s Robin Williams. The likeness is eerily accurate.
The museum also does screenings. While we were there, they were showing 1940s Superman cartoons to children in a small theater. I approve.
I’m glad my sister alerted me to the existence of this museum in Queens, because the Jim Henson exhibit alone is seventh heaven. The rest makes for a nice bonus. Check it out if you’re in the area.
Museum of Broadway
We also visited the Museum of Broadway, which is very much worthwhile for theatre buffs.
The exhibits take you through Broadway history chronologically, all the way up to the present, and key shows represent each era. Oklahoma, West Side Story, Rent, and The Producers are among the musicals that get some extra attention.
The displays also include interesting trivia about lesser-known productions. I learned that there was a Breakfast at Tiffany’s musical starring Mary Tyler Moore, which closed during previews in 1966, as well as a short-lived Doonesbury musical in 1983.
Sadly, though, I did not see any acknowledgment of It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman or Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
Theatre may be the one medium that superheroes can’t conquer.
But not for my lack of trying! I did once get my own superheroes on a stage. Back in 2008, my non-musical play Super! was performed in a small theater in Chicago. Featuring early versions of Alyssa, Miranda, and Ken, that script was merely the start of what eventually became Terrific.
My play was not featured in the Broadway museum either, as it was performed in Chicago, not New York. Obviously the only reason.
Love this museum. Saw a Mad Men walk through there that I still think about regularly.
Very cool! Looks like you and your family had a great time! 😄
Neat to find out that Terrific had its origins as a play! How much of that play carried over into the novel(s), if I may ask?
Speaking of superheroes on stage, three (possibly more) of Japan's largest superhero franchises - Super Sentai (what Power Rangers is adapted from), Kamen Rider, and Ultraman - has had stage shows pretty much every year featuring that year's entry into the franchise. Though they (and the franchises) are usually seen as more children's fare, and may not be what you were envisioning. But I thought that I'd bring that up, in case it gives you hope for superheroes on stage in the future. 😉