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Day trip to the Schulz Museum: You’re a good man, Charlie Brown!
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Posing with Chuck (Photo: Ed Uyeshima)
He created nearly 18,000 Peanuts strips over five decades without interruption. His last one ran on January 3, 2000, and he died five weeks later. For a generation of us, his characters were like family, his merchandise were permanent fixtures in our bedrooms, and the annual ritual of watching “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was as necessary to the holidays as baked yams with mini-marshmallows. After Elvis, legendary cartoonist Charles Schulz has been the "highest paid deceased person" for the past five years according to Forbes Magazine. His place in popular culture is intractable, which is why a day trip visit to the
View of the museum from the back (Photo: Ed Uyeshima)
An hour north of
Yoshiteru Otani’s “Peanuts Tile Mural” (2002) (Photo: Ed Uyeshima)
The 27,000-square-foot museum, however, is far more than Schulz’s individual strips, one hundred of which are showcased in the Strip Rotation Gallery and continuously rotated among the seven thousand in the archive to show how Peanuts evolved over time. The entire place feels like a big house albeit a very nice modern one with slate floors, cherry ceilings, and a copper roof. It features six thousand square feet of gallery space, several education and research rooms, expansive outdoor areas with exhibits surrounding the building, and the Great Hall. The latter makes quite an impression with a huge mural by Japanese artist (and obvious Peanuts aficionado) Yoshiteru Otani, made up of 3,500 tiles, each a Peanuts strip. All together, they form a 22-foot high version of the iconic picture of Lucy taking the football away before just before Charlie Brown kicks it. Otani also designed the bas-relief sculpture overhead called "Morphing Snoopy", a 3.5 ton wood sculpture depicting the evolution of the famous beagle.
The familiar sight of Snoopy dragging Linus (Photo: Ed Uyeshima)
There's a colorful impressionistic painting by Tom Everhart of a Red Baron-chasing Snoopy at the dinner table in the Strip Rotation Gallery. Go upstairs to see a complete recreation of Schulz's office, Sparky's Studio, as well as intriguing exhibits like environmental artist Cristo’s paper-wrapped doghouse and a near-primitive mural Schulz painted for his infant daughter that was somehow salvaged from a Colorado home. You can also see works by other cartoonists inspired by Schulz. Outside in the back are some nice figurines of Charlie Brown and Linus, a familiar kite stuck up in a tree, and even a
Of course, there’s an unavoidable little gift nook in the entry area. But if shopping is your main incentive, then walk past the ice rink to the two-story Snoopy's Gallery & Gift Shop, an embarrassment of riches when it comes to Peanuts paraphernalia. There's even a viewing space on the second floor for the kiddies to watch the TV cartoons non-stop. The cash cow is obviously Snoopy in all his simple glory, whether he is plush, plastic or pliable. One wonders what Schulz would have made of all this. Embarrassed perhaps, but if you believe David Michaelis’ dark-hued portrait in his voluminous 2007 book, “Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography”, the cartoonist may have been quite pleased with himself.
The Peanuts gang go into their dance (Video: YouTube)
DIRECTIONS FROM SAN FRANCISCO: Take Highway 101 North.
LOCATIONS: (1)
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