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Museum Of Moving Image Launches Kickstarter To Bring The Muppets To Queens

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A New York City museum wants the Muppets to make Queens their permanent home.

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The Museum of the Moving Image has launched a Kickstarter campaign asking fans to donate $40,000 to preserve Jim Henson's iconic characters, like Elmo, Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog.

"Jim Henson's work has meant so much to so many people, myself included," actor Neil Patrick Harris says in a video on the Kickstarter page. "His humor and inventiveness have inspired people to find their own creative voices."

The Queens museum owns hundreds of Henson puppets and other objects including costumes and props, all donated by Henson's family in 2013. Henson died in 1990.

According to the Kickstarter page, the new exhibit will explore Henson's early career and delve into the fictional worlds his fans have come to know and love, like "Sesame Street," and the friends of "Fraggle Rock."

Besides the puppets, the exhibit will feature rarely seen video footage and photographs going back to Henson's early work in television in the 1950s.

Curator Barbara Miller said the museum has never turned to crowdfunding before but it made sense for the Muppet exhibit "because the community of fans is so active."
"This is one element of an effort to cross the finish line for fundraising," Miller said.

Donors will get perks including T-shirts, artisanal chocolate and naming rights to a puppet pedestal.

A traveling exhibition using objects from the collection will open May 20 at Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture.

Museum officials are hoping to open the exhibit this summer.

As of Wednesday morning, the museum had reached $23,673 of its $40,00 goal.

For more information and to donate, click here.

(© Copyright 2017 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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