We’d planned to go visit the Jim Henson exhibit at the Maryland Center for History and Culture here in Baltimore on Kristen’s birthday, but now that my open mics no longer run on Monday there is NO art, history OR culture in Baltimore City on Mondays.
So it had to wait a bit.
It was worth the wait.
I think my parents TRIED to raise me on Sesame Street, but the Muppets were FAR more formative, and over the years, watching plenty of documentaries and going to a couple of similar-to-this exhibits over the years, I’d argue that means that Jim Henson probably had no small part in molding my persona… far MORE so than if Sesame Street and the Fraggles and other intentionally educational program had impacted me greater than the warm chaos of the Muppet Show.
This was a beautiful deep dive into all sorts of Jim Henson projects, back from initial art school-ish exploits, to making posters and various other small-job efforts at self-funding, to his tongue-in-cheek efforts to raise Big Money while holding on to his soul against the world.
And the museum as a whole is a fascinating, slightly strange place.
I generally think of myself as being very, very fortunate Living in this state. That goes far beyond the usual Maryland cultishness over having a cool flag with my favourite colours on it. I genuinely believe the public schools are held to a higher standard, the public health services are better, and the whole “mini-America” thing that Maryland’s got, crossing LOTS of cultures and biomes and ways of Life all in one state is truly, very, very American. It’s a fascinating cultural crossroads that I’ve grown to appreciate more and more as I’ve traveled across the United States. And that goes beyond just spawning Jim Henson!
This museum does a strange job of putting together both Maryland’s positives and negatives, and spans a LOT of the state’s soul, but it’s very uneven. Pride of place seems to be given to spectacular, ornate furniture. More Smithsonian-ish credit is given to the original Native American cultures that were here before us via dioramas and paintings that mention original treaties and meetings, greetings and difficulties. The museum tends to say things like “treaties that were engaged in without the full understanding of the natives” or they talk about how “these agreements fell apart” or didn’t last… never quite talking about slaughter or cultural decimation.
The discussion of the American revolution in the museum has some fascinating little moments, referencing the idea that Great Britain recruited many black pre-Americans into their armies by promising emancipation long before the Union got the same idea in the Civil War. How powerful cultures use and abuse the materials around them, whether they be animal, mineral, vegetable or human.
And then you’ve got the entire first floor of one building devoted to the battle for civil rights and racial integration, prejudice and the Preservation of the Baltimore Uprising, which connects a lot of dots between slavery, the cultural revolutions of the mid-twentieth century, the In Progress… interviews I’ve been doing with Sandy Spring Museum, and Freddie Gray on to today.
It was a strange mix, and became a strange emotional mix too. When we asked the docent at the front door what else was in the museum, she mentioned some historical furniture on the top floor, and something about a circus, and I don’t remember how she worded it, but I hadn’t gotten ANY impression as to how intense the civil rights exhibit was, and she said that most people just go straight to the Henson exhibit because that was the most exciting part. I decided to go up to the top and work our way through historical stuff into Henson, figuring I was saving the best for last… but I’D heartily recommend doing history, then civil rights, THEN Henson – because the latter will leave you with a sense of optimism, rather than the more despairing emotions that I think Kristen and I were left with!
