Forget about Manhattan, the Muppets are taking on Mississippi, and they want you to come along for the ride.
“Jim Henson’s Fantastic World,” a new interactive exhibit at the Mississippi Museum of Art, offers fun for the entire family. It doesn’t matter if you’re not a die-hard fan of the quirky, hairy puppets, which used to have their own television show. One stroll through the “Fantastic World” and you’ll be mesmerized by the magic Jim Henson has created.
In addition to the weird-looking, fanged puppets, which performed skits on “The Muppet Show,” the exhibit also features more familiar characters, such as Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzie Bear and Bert and Ernie from “Sesame Street.” The popular Muppets are displayed in kid-friendly exhibits, including an interactive theater, which gives children a chance to work on their own puppetry skills.
The Mississippi Museum of Art is also displaying galleries filled with hand-drawn pencil sketches of fantasy creatures, including one of a Big Bird prototype. The fantasy version of Big Bird features far fewer feathers than the one you see on “Sesame Street” episodes. The exhibit also gives a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to operate Bird Bird. A sketch of a man inside the bird costume with an arm extended to control the beak is prominently displayed in the Muppet exhibit.
The museum also features a section, which explains why Mississippi is the recipient of this fantastic exhibit. According to museum curators, Henson, who died at age 53 in 1990, spent his childhood in the Mississippi Delta town of Leland, where he would chase frogs along Deer Creek as he developed a lifelong love of nature.
If you can’t catch the show in Mississippi you can view it when it travels to the following museums: National Heritage Museum in Lexington, Massachusetts in April; Fresno Metropolitan Museum in Fresno, California, in July and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago in October.
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