Puppets in Education

October - January  2025

Our relationship with puppets goes back both through our earliest memories and our human history. From the earliest dolls to the most complex marionettes, from the classroom curriculum to television programming, from animating an object to the digital armatures of virtual reality, we find our gestures and expression channeled through puppets. 

But what is it, exactly, that we are doing when we pick up, move, and talk through an object that is not us? And what is it about this that so captivates our attention? This exhibit asks us—by taking up and playing with the gestures of puppeting—to reflect on what is educative about puppets, and what puppets themselves might teach us about education.