The Magic of Jim Henson Comes to Brisbane in World-First GOMA Exhibition
Kermit the Frog has arrived in Brisbane — and he’s brought a few friends with him.
Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Elmo, Bert and Ernie, the inhabitants of Fraggle Rock and the fantastical creatures of Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal are among the stars of Make, Believe, Magic: The Worlds of The Jim Henson Company, opening at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art on Saturday.
Unveiled at GOMA on Friday morning, the world-exclusive exhibition is a colourful trip through 70 years of Jim Henson’s extraordinary imagination, featuring more than 500 objects drawn from television, film and stage.
There are handcrafted puppets, animatronic creatures, costumes, props, drawings and moving images, but the exhibition also pulls back the curtain to reveal how Henson and the generations of artists who followed him actually created their magic.
For anyone who grew up with Sesame Street, there’s an immediate nostalgic thrill in encountering Big Bird, Mr. Snuffleupagus, Cookie Monster and Elmo. Kermit, naturally, is here too.
But Henson’s universe extends well beyond Sesame Street.
Visitors can enter the world of Fraggle Rock with Gobo, Red, Mokey, Wembley and Boober before moving into the more elaborate fantasy landscapes of Labyrinth, Farscape and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.
One of the exhibition’s biggest attractions is making its world debut in Brisbane.
Original sets from Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock have been transported from the production’s Canadian filming base and reconstructed inside GOMA. Doc’s Workshop and the enormous Great Hall are displayed at “puppeteer height,” giving audiences the unusual opportunity to explore both the sets and the hidden corridors used by the performers working behind them.
Exhibition curator Amanda Slack-Smith describes it as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to see these environments from a perspective normally hidden from audiences.
The exhibition also traces the extraordinary technical journey that began when Jim Henson and Jane Nebel started experimenting with puppetry for television in the 1950s.
Those early innovations ultimately led to Jim Henson’s Creature Shop and increasingly ambitious combinations of puppetry, animatronics, practical effects and digital filmmaking.
The results could be wonderfully silly, but Henson always took the work itself seriously.
“For over 70 years countless creatives have dedicated their artistry to reflect my father’s fundamental ideas about art, storytelling, characters and worldbuilding,” Jim Henson Company CEO Lisa Henson says.
That included, she adds, “the idea that the serious work we do — even when making sometimes not-so serious productions — can positively influence the world.”
The exhibition’s final section should prove particularly enticing for fans of Henson’s darker work. GOMA has created an expansive presentation devoted to The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, complete with Gelfling, Skeksis, a towering Landstrider and the Crystal of Truth.
The Henson celebration extends beyond the gallery walls. GOMA’s Australian Cinémathèque will screen more than 90 films across three free programs examining Henson’s work, the Creature Shop and the wider history of puppetry in world cinema.
There will also be talks with representatives from The Jim Henson Company, school holiday activities, puppetry performances and a series of GOMA Friday Nights in March and April 2027.
Queensland tourism authorities are expecting the exhibition to become a significant Brisbane attraction in its own right, forecasting as many as 110,000 visitor nights and a $22 million contribution to the state economy during its seven-month run.
Yet numbers aren’t really what Make, Believe, Magic is about. Henson’s creations have endured because behind all the felt, feathers, googly eyes and ingenious puppetry was a remarkably simple idea: make audiences believe these characters were alive.
Seventy years later, Kermit and company are still making it look easy.
Make, Believe, Magic: The Worlds of The Jim Henson Company is at GOMA, Brisbane, from September 12, 2026 to April 18, 2027.