Muppets now art objects By Mark Barabak SAN DIEGO (UPI) Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear are part of an exhibit San Diego's Museum of Art. The ' "Art of the Muppets" showing will NBC makes decisions HOLLYWOOD (AP) "*Prime Time Sunday" will become "Prime Time Saturday" around the first of the year, and NBC will cancel two more series. Joining "Eischeid," already announced for axing by year's end, are "A Man Called Sloane" and "Kate Loves A Mystery." The latter series was canceled last spring, then revived for the fall by the network. Among the new shows set for the NBC schedule i is "United States," a look at contemporary marriage produced by Larry Gelbart, who brought "M-A-S-H" to CBS and wrote the movie "Oh, God." The series will star Beau Bridges and open to the public Sunday for a six-week engagement to run through Jan. 13. More than 86,000 people are expected to tour the exhibit, and museum officals say they've received inquiries from throughout the nation. "The exhibit is a departure from the usual staid museum show," said Steven Brezzo, acting director of the museum and a college friend of Muppet creator Jim Henson. "It offers an opportunity to expand the visual literacy of many people and extends art into a more contemporary, creative and fun vein." The actual Muppets used on the weekly television series, currently on a holiday filming break, and their predecessors are displayed for the first time in a museum setting. The Muppets, the word a derivative of puppet and marionette, are displayed in glass cases that chronologically trace their emergence in the career of the puppeteer Henson. The show dates from his beginning on a local Washington, D.C., television show in 1957 to the characters' recent appearance in "The Muppet Movie." A touch-feel wall affords patrons the opportunity to feel the materials used in creation of the Muppets, while a wallsize mural shows the workshop and stepby-step procedure taken in the process. Brezzo said he conceived the unique showing while watching the Muppets on television. "The Muppets combine everything in the arts," Brezzo said. "They are a conglomeration of so many different disciplines. They cross the lines of all fine art with their pathos and design, simplicity and grace.' The exhibit includes a continuous video display of various Muppet shows and human cut -out figures that show how the characters are operated. One Muppet staff designer, who worked in consultation with the museum on the exhibit, voiced a concern the characters might lose their warmth and charm if displayed lifeless behind glass. *But, the Muppets are an art form which has different levels," Mari Kaestle said. "Performing and visual art is one aspect of them, but their look up close and design is still another.' She always
