Origins

Last summer, the greatest museum exhibit in the history of museum exhibits stopped at its home base at the Smithsonian International gallery: Jim Henson's Fantastic World. The exhibit showcased the journey of Henson's limitless imagination, from his days discovering puppetry at the University of Maryland, through his snarky and wonderful early work in commercials, to the heights of his genius with Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, and his magically bizarre Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. The exhibit was full of sketches, early videos, notebooks, muppets, costumes, and all things that build an engaging history of a genius.

Sometimes, even in this great city of free museums and brilliant traveling exhibits, I end up missing something I really want to see. Work, life, and the complacency that can set in when you live in such an easy museum place tend to combine to make four months go by as quickly as a weekend. But nothing in the world could have prevented me from visiting the Jim Henson exhibit. And nothing--not even the multitudes of people with strollers in the tightly packed exhibit space--prevented me from absorbing every little bit of Henson wisdom offered by the exhibit.

All the shoving and noise and small children running into my knees were worth it when I got to the early concept sketches of Ernie and Bert and the stories that went along with Henson's and Frank Oz's creation of the characters. And then, in a display case in the middle of the final exhibit space, were Ernie and Bert. The Ernie and Bert. My Ernie and Bert. Well, okay, they weren't mine (and they weren't going to be mine, despite the museum heist my colleagues and I planned but wisely chose not to enact). In fact, the exhibit made me realize just how much they belonged to everyone: I was not the only one with tears in my eyes upon discovery of the glass case, and I'm sure I was not the only one planning a great muppet caper.

Sadly, the exhibit left my town, but it may be in yours. It still travels to Seattle, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Massachusetts, Fresno, and Chicago in the next two years. Don't miss it.