Jim Henson's puppets donated to NY museum

Muppets Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, the kooky Fraggle Rock crew, Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie as well as other puppets from Jim Henson's influential career are moving to a new home in Queens, N.Y.

• SLIDESHOW:Jim Henson, hislife and times

Nearly 400 piecesfrom original puppets and costumes to behind-the-scenes film footage have been donated to the Museum of the Moving Image following the recent death ofHenson's former wife and longtime collaborator Jane Henson.

"She loved the Muppet characters as though they were part of her own family," Cheryl Henson, one of the couple's daughters, said Tuesday at a news conference.

"It was her dream to have these dear friends find a good home where they could be seen and enjoyed, and where new audiences could learn about the many facets of my father's work."

The collection will be housed in a newly builtgallery at the museum, which is located in the New York City borough of Queens. The Muppet gallerya $5-million project that is receiving $2.75 million in funding from the city will open in the winter of 2014-2015.

In 2011 and 2012, the 25-year-old museum saw its attendance spike when it opened the temporary exhibit Jim Henson's Fantastic World. The successful show featured more than 120 drawings, storyboards, photos, props and iconic puppets that spanned puppeteer, writer and Emmy-winning producer Henson's entire career. He died of pneumonia in 1990, at the age of 53.

Henson's family previously donated some of his earliest creations from the 1950s show Sam and Friends including the original Kermit the Frog to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in 2010.