Jim Henson’s Fantastic World
July 24, 2008 at 8:15 amDC, Interiors, People, Smithsonian, museums
As promised earlier, a picture from Jim Henson’s Fantastic World at the Smithsonian’s International Gallery. (Even though you are not supposed to take photos… here’s some blurry camera-phone for you) If you are a kid you will love this exhibit. If you are a grown-up, you will love this exhibit because it will remind you of being a kid. From Fraggle Rock to my personal favorite King Goshposh and his sidekick Featherstone, there are tons of things on display that will make you smile. The life-size puppets are the best part, and people enjoyed peering into the cases to look at the construction and detailing.
I thought Henson’s simple lines sketches were the most interesting. In many cases, a few pencil strokes was all it took for an idea to be born and described. You could see the personality of his character puppets long before they became 3-dimensional. It was also interesting to learn about all of Henson’s “failures” - ideas that were deemed too ridiculous at the time and never picked up.
And of course there was the always-adorable Kermit, innovative at the time for his soft structure which would allow the puppeteers to create tons of different facial expressions with just small changes in their hands and fingers.
Go go go! to the exhibit - you have to see it for yourself.
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