Paul, he worked as a teacher for Art Instruction Inc., where one of his coworkers was named, yes, Charlie Brown. He served in the Army in Europe as a machine-gun squad leader during World War II. He went on to marry twice and have five children. (Aha!) He was the only child of a barber and a homemaker, and very shy. Paul, Minn., with a couple of years in Needles. (He later donated the baseball field behind the museum as well.) By that time, he was 47 and had been doing the daily strip for 19 years. To catch your own further glimpse of the artist, cross the street to the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, which Schulz built as a gift to the community in 1969. Schulz family members have criticized the book as an unfairly dark rendering of the man, but in a Wall Street Journal review, Watterson found it “perceptive and compelling.” (Gina Huntsinger, the museum’s marketing director, says the museum bookshop did have the book in stock for a while, but it wasn’t there in May, nor was it in early September.) What you may not find at the museum, however, is a copy of “Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography,” by David Michaelis, a 2007 book that portrayed Schulz as a depressed, removed, compulsively productive figure who channeled his frustrations into art. In the garden just outside the front door, there’s a Snoopy labyrinth. The museum also stages classes for kids - fundamentals of art, basics of animation, the science of “Peanuts,” making movies with Lego pieces, you name it. During my visit in May, one area was filled with “The Language of Lines: How Cartoonists Communicate,” featuring original works from Garry (“Doonesbury”) Trudeau, Walt (“Pogo”) Kelly, Bill (“Calvin and Hobbes”) Watterson, Mort (“Beetle Bailey”) Walker and Berkeley (“Bloom County”) Breathed (who will appear at the museum Oct. Many exhibitions also look more broadly at cartoons in American culture or American culture in cartoons. The artist’s studio, desk and bookshelves are preserved in a room, and a place of honor is reserved for a wrapped-up Snoopy doghouse - a gift to Schulz from his longtime friend Christo. One wall of the 27,000-square-foot museum is covered with ceramic tiles bearing 3,588 comic strips, which together make a black-and-white mural.

Price: Adult admission is $8 children ages 4 to 17, $5.Ĭurrent exhibitions cover “Peanuts” and politics, baseball as allegory and the whole Lucy-Schroeder-Beethoven love triangle. Summer hours ( Memorial Day to Labor Day): Museum also open on Tuesdays, with same hours as the rest of the week.

2301 Hardies Lane, Santa Rosa, Calif.(707) 579-4452 Fall, winter and spring hours: 11 a.m.

Charles schulz museum shop