Saturday Night Live is staging a 40th anniversary exhibit in New York

By B.G. Henne | January 14, 2015 | 5:40pm

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Tempting us all to make cutting remarks about an aged Saturday Night Live’s decline into pop-culture irrelevance, Variety reports that the sketch show will be celebrating its 40th anniversary with a “museum-like” experience in New York City this spring. Opening at the Premier exhibition center, “Saturday Night Live: The Exhibition” will offer visitors the chance to peruse vintage set pieces, scripts, props, and “interactive elements” from sketches across SNL’s four decades of existence. It’s the type of sweeping retrospective that will put Rob Schneider’s “copy guy” into its proper context.

In conjunction with the exhibit, Saturday Night Live is throwing itself a three-hour birthday bash episode, which it announced last April because it’s one of those shows that can’t shut up about its own birthday. Sadly, nothing suggests that any of the celebrations include a Saturday Night Live At The Museum crossover event, which means we won’t get to see night watchman Ben Stiller exploring after hours, only to discover a very real Matt Foley, awakened by an Elwood Blues harmonica solo, emerging from his van down by the river while animatronic news anchor Colin Jost soullessly smiles.