SST 40th Anniversary Library Exhibit Project, Coming in September

[Convincing John]

I must say, my favorite parts of the exhibet are the "People in Your Neighborhood" section, the baker display (it almost looks like an an honorary Palisades Toys figure and playset), the section on monsters who originated on The Ed Sullivan Show, the storyboards (I don't ever remember seeing those segments), and the big picture of Oscar and Bruno from Follow That Bird.

A Palisades figure of the Baker...oh man, wouldn't that've been sweet if they had made one?

The storyboards...let's see, the first one is "Story of L". It has the phrase "Never Leap on A Lying Leopard" at the end. it's on Youtube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59AF0JBdz-0

The other one I have never seen, just read about. According to the storyboard, it's called "N for Naughty and Nice". Both clips are by Fred Calvert.

As far as I know that was the first live action photo of Debi Spinney I've seen. Only other photos I remember seeing were the illustrations in Caroll Spinney's book.

There might be more out there, but I can tell you for a fact that photo's not from any book, article or any other commercial item. Y'know how I know? I took that photo! They were nice enough to let me do that. (Nice picture, eh?)

I know that sheet music for the theme song was there, but did you also put in sheet music for other songs? Because that looked like a lot of pages of sheet music for just one song.

Yep, just the theme song. It didn't matter that it was repeated, though. (My boss liked it, so I stuck with it). I liked it because it was photocopied from Sesame Street Unpaved, which was photocopied from the real deal (which IMHO should be on permanent display at the Smithsonian).

I know you had said how big the cabnets are, but I was still surprised by how tall and wide they are.

Yeah, they're pretty big. About...45 inches long and 34 inches tall if I remember right.

Convincing John

 

[Convincing John]

It's online!

The exhibit is now online for everyone to see! More about it will be on the Muppet Mindset very soon, but this is the website for it that my boss put together:

http://www.library.illinois.edu/ugl/exhibits/sesame/index.html

FYI, some of the links are still under construction and need some fixing, but everything should run smoothly here in a couple of days.

Convincing John

 

[minor muppetz]

I prefer seeing the images on this site over the previous site. It's great to see close-ups of things that didn't have close-ups previously.

By coincidence, yesterday I was thinking about that section with four animated segments (Typewriter, Computer #10, Pixar lamps, and King of 8) and started wondering if that section had to do with the show's different animation styles... And then I saw that it was in fact about the different kinds of animation (though I would have put in some kind of clay animation over The King of 8, though I guess clay and stop-motion are more-or-less the same thing).

I noticed a few instances where you referred to "40 Years of Sunny Days Vol. 1 & 2" as opposed to discs 1 & 2. I guess they are available seperately at the library... But if only there actually WERE two seperate volumes in existience! It would be cool if they released a second volume at the end of the anniversary, with a "Season 41 Sneak Peek". (If Sesame Workshop/Warner Bros. is reading this and gets any ideas, I'd like it to include most of the stuff pictured that didn't make it into the existing volume!)

I still question the logic of including Bumble Ardy with other familair children's characters... As far as I know he was only in one book, and I don't have any memory of the book or sketch before I saw it on Old School Volume 2. I guess it makes sense if the library has a copy of the book.

Interesting fact about Bumble Ardy not mentioned in the exhibet: The segment was a collaboration between Maurice Sendak and Jim Henson! A year ago somebody contacted Karen Falk about Jim Henson's invovlement in the Number Three Ball Film, and she sent a response, where she mentioned that Henson collarborated with Sendak on that source. The message was copied at http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Number_Three_Ball_Film I don't blame you if you didn't know that, as that's the only official source I know of that mentions it (the 40th anniversary book doesn't mention Henson's invovlement with the segment, and it doesn't show up in a search for "Henson" at sesamestreet.org, though all of Henson's other films that are available there do show up when typing "Henson" in the search).

I enjoyed looking at the sections on celebrities and pop culture references. I didn't notice before that there was a section on the hawaii episodes. One thing that I noticed is that in a number of different sections there seems to be one segment not available on DVD while the other moments pictured are on DVD (though there are some where pretty much all pictured segments aren't on any commercial DVDs, like the one on monsters from The Ed Sullivan Show and the cultural trends).

Anyway, once again, good job!