The Jim Henson Collection

The Jim Henson Collection is a permanent exhibition at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, and it's the biggest collection of Jim Henson's puppets in the world. It traces his whole career, from his earliest experiments to the characters that became part of popular culture—Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth. You'll see the iconic ones alongside the lesser-known creations, and the props, costumes, and stories that go with them.

The exhibition treats these as crafted physical objects rather than just nostalgia, and it's the best-known draw of the Center's Worlds of Puppetry Museum. It sits alongside the Global Collection, which looks at puppetry as a global performance language. The Center opened in 1978 with Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog at the ribbon-cutting, and it now holds more than 5,000 puppets and artifacts. The collection is permanent, though select items rotate periodically, so it's not a one-time thing.

The Center for Puppetry Arts is at 1404 Spring St. NW at 18th St., Atlanta, GA 30309-2820, and it's open Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is $18 for non-members and free for members, with member admission limits that apply. If you've never been, it's a good place to start with the museum's broader holdings.