The Muppets Take the Smithsonian

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The Muppets Take the Smithsonian | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine

Road trip!

For the past 19 years, since being donated to the American History Museum in 1994, Kermit the Frog has languished alone in a glass case, unable to see his beloved. But today, the museum announces that the Jim Henson Legacy organization and the Henson family is donating 21 of Henson’s most cherished puppets from “The Muppet Show,” “Sesame Street” and other shows and films—a group that includes Elmo, the Swedish Chef, Fozzie Bear and, perhaps most important for Kermit, his longtime love, Miss Piggy. Fans of the Muppets will be able to see some of these latest additions to the collection in December in a new exhibition on puppetry (The Count, Oscar the Grouch and others will take a bow first with other Muppets rotating in every few months.) Miss Piggy will take a star turn as part of the museum’s permanent “American Stories” exhibition.

“We cannot believe it’s finally happened,” says Dwight Blocker Bowers, a curator at the museum. For years, he explains, museum staff were in discussion with Jim’s wife Jane Henson. Shortly before her death in April 2013, she agreed to a donation, which has since been carried out by Bonnie Erickson, who designed and built many of the puppets and now serves as executive director of the Jim Henson Legacy. “Generations of people grew up on ‘Sesame Street,’ and Jim Henson had an unmistakable influence on American entertainment as a whole,” Bowers says. “In many ways, these will be the real jewels of our entertainment collection.”

 

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Today was Jim Henson's birthday.