Exhibit explores Muppets founder

NEW YORK - It seems so familiar to us now - puppet characters on television that are so real, so expressive, so alive that we forget there's a human being doing the actual work behind the scenes.

There's a reason that's so familiar, the organizers of an exhibit opening this weekend in New York say: Jim Henson.

The master puppeteer and media innovator behind pop culture icons such as Kermit the Frog and Big Bird was a creative thinker who understood the opportunities that television and technology presented, said Karen Falk, archivist for The Jim Henson Company and curator of "Jim Henson's Fantastic World".