by lhb412 » Sun Sep 24, 2017 11:46 pm
Made a day trip to Atlanta to take my sister to something she'd been wanting to see: an exhibit of props and costumes from Jim Henson's Labyrinth, one of her favorite films, at the Center for Puppetry Arts. The Labyrinth exhibit was neat: a room featuring various goblins, weapons, ballroom gowns, and even Bowie's costume from the end of the movie. It was fun - but we didn't know that this was just a sliver of an otherwise much larger Jim Henson exhibit across the hall featuring puppets, props, and concept art for everything from Henson's earliest TV work to Muppet productions done after Henson's death. Practically every major muppet from The Muppets and Sesame Street was on display, labeled to describe who designed that character, the materials used to make it, and what production this puppet or costume was made for (a couple were produced just for display while others dated to the earliest days of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show and everything in between). TV specials were represented, there were a selection of Fraggles, and then a whole lot of stuff from The Dark Crystal, including the original suits for a Skeksis and Aughra! At the end were a few things from Labyrinth that didn't fit in the Labyrinth room, namely the doors: the living door knocker and it's door, plus both of the riddle doors with the built in dog guard guys.
The permanent part of the museum was nifty as well: puppets from all over the world, many of which were very old: a set of traditional Punch & Judy characters, traditional Japanese puppets from the 1800s, some early Taiwanese 'action' puppets (the kind that would eventually inspire Pili), traditional African puppets with props from the Broadway production of Lion King they inspired beside them, the lead characters from The Corpse Bride and Coraline were there, and even a Gumby and Pokey were on display.