CENTER FOR PUPPETRY ARTS INC

Programs: More than 600 performances are offered each season for both family and adult audiences. New works and original adaptations of classic stories in a variety of puppetry styles are produced by the center and presented in performance by visiting puppeteers from around the world. Family performances in 2014-15 included dr. Seusss the cat in the hat, rainforest adventures, and paul bunyan and the tall tale medicine show.

the center offers arts-infused learning opportunities with more than 1,000 workshops, residencies, presentations, and master classes each year for all ages, pre-school through adult. This programming is provided at the center, at outreach locations, and via interactive videoconferencing and webinars. The centers signature educational offering, the create-a-puppet workshop, is offered with each family series production. This workshop allows participants to create a puppet relating to the show and perform with it on the classroom stage, reinforcing curriculum subjects such as science, social studies, language arts, and fine arts. More than 20,000 children and adults participated in the centers on-site programming in 2014-15.

the centers museum was in transition during 2014-15, as the organization completed a major renovation and expansion. As part of the project, the center performed conservation work on objects in the jim henson collection, completed construction and installation of new exhibits, and developed new museum programming. The centers global puppetry exhibit, puppets: the power of wonder was closed in april 2015, and the new worlds of puppetry museum opened in november 2015. Just over 8,000 people enjoyed the collection in its previous home between june 2014-and april 2015. The newly-expanded museum features two permanent exhibitions: the global collection and the jim henson collection. These exhibitions feature just a small portion of the centers permanent museum collection which is the largest publicly accessible puppetry collection in the united states. The collection includes nearly 2,000 puppets, 1,000 posters, 2,800 books and periodicals, and 1,000 audio-visual recordings documenting puppetry throughout the world. Items are rotated through permanent exhibitions in order to ensure the long-term preservation of the artifacts.