Don't Eat the Pictures: Sesame Street at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Context & Trivia

The special was shot inside the real Metropolitan Museum of Art during off-hours—full Mondays or pre-dawn slots on other days—and brought together one of the most concentrated casts of Muppet performers in the show's history. Caroll Spinney performed Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch; Frank Oz handled Cookie Monster, Grover, and Bert; Jim Henson performed Ernie; Jerry Nelson performed the Count; Brian Muehl performed Telly Monster; and Martin P. Robinson, assisted by Bryant Young, operated Mr. Snuffleupagus, a full-body puppet requiring sustained two-performer coordination throughout.

A key detail for puppet historians: Snuffleupagus was still officially Big Bird's imaginary friend in 1983, visible to no other character, which gives his nighttime museum scenes a particular narrative tension that only registers within the specific arc of his evolution on the series. On the construction side, the child actor playing Prince Sahu had a fear of cats—a problem, since the character's cat needed to appear alongside the puppet figures in certain shots. The Muppet Workshop built a puppet replica of the animal for those moments, while other scenes were filmed with the live cat kept off-camera entirely.

The production was funded two-thirds by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant and one-third by the Children's Television Workshop. It first aired on PBS on November 16, 1983, was released on VHS by Random House in 1987, reissued by Sony Wonder in 1996, and released on DVD in 2011.