They currently also have an exhibit on Jim Henson's work, including Muppets and a lot of storyboards and sketches. It's fascinating to look at proposal covers for the Muppet Show, done by hand with ink pens and whiteout. This stuff was put together waaaay before desktop publishing.
I also really enjoyed seeing storyboards and sketches for what were called "counting films," which you may remember from Sesame Street as the bright animated shorts in which they counted up to some number using fabulous shapes or characters and music. I love seeing the thought process, and for kids it's cool to show them all the thinking that takes place before anything ever shows up on a screen.
In fact, it was really striking how low-tech most of the productions were. And, as an added bonus, there was a sketch showing exactly how the puppeteer gets inside of and operates Big Bird.
And, as a nice touch, they had a notebook out with a pen where you could sketch out a character just the way Henson used to do it. I loved how that made the exhibit about inspiring people, not just showing them what someone else did.
Anyway, if you're in Seattle before August 16th it's well worth seeing both for the nostalgia and for the peek at the ideas taking shape.
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