Feb 15: Museum of the Moving Image - New York

In April 2019, I went to New York, and took the subway out to the east of Manhattan to the area known as Astoria with my son to visit somewhere that had been on our itinerary. It was a fascinating and great experience as up until then we had been mostly in Manhattan, but this took us more towards the suburbs and along suburban streets with very different shops and locals, students and residents - rather than more of the tourists like ourselves.

We went to the Museum of the Moving Image.

There was an exhibition of Jim Henson puppets, costumes and props, going from his early TV series, through The Muppets, Sesame Street and the Dark Crystal amongst others, including the film: Labyrinth, which starred David Bowie. This is still at the museum now in fact, as it is so popular.

There were also costumes from the Coen Brothers film 'The Ballad of Buster Scruggs', and an exhibit of old computer games as well.

I took lots of images at the museum, which can be seen on Flickr. They included this famous prosthetic.

I took pictures of many of the props from a large collection on one of the floors and some of them will appear as challenges in future posts. The museum was large and open and had a nice vibe to it.

One slight disappointment was the shop which one would imagine would have made more of the exhibits and offered some obvious souvenirs like t-shirts etc. and film related memorabilia to take away.

The museum is well worth the detour if you happen to find yourself in New York. I hope to go back to the city one day - more on our film location detective work will appear in future posts.

Please let me know of any other international film museums. 

I'm aware of one featuring Studio Ghibl films, which is on my son's wish list to visit. It's in Mitaka in suburban Tokyo, and was threatened with closure because of the pandemic, but a crowdfunding campaign has kept it open for now.

Internal images and Chewbacca head: Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license.