Last weekend, my wife and I visited the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Sonoma County, which I had been looking forward to visiting for a while now. It was fantastic! In this post, I am sharing a few highlights with you.
I first encountered Snoopy when I was eight. My mom gifted me this yellow comic book with a curious cartoon dog on the cover. The book had the original comic strips in English with Chinese translation on the side. I loved the comic, so my mom bought me a few more.
First Impression
We arrived at the museum in Santa Rosa after driving for an hour on Sunday. I knew I had come to the right place when I saw these.
As I entered the main building, a large mural caught my attention. Japanese designer Yoshiteru Otani was a long-time admirer of Sparky (as Charles Schulz is known among his family and friends). Otani has worked on creative projects based on Peanuts characters since 1993. For this mural, he hand-selected 3,588 ceramic tiles—or ten years’ worth of daily strips—to recreate a large scene of Lucy holding a football for Charlie Brown.
Morphing of Snoopy
In the hallway was a 7000-pound sculpture named Morphing of Snoopy, created by the same Japanese artist as the mural. This project, which used 43 layers of maple veneer, took Otani two years to complete.
The Schultz family brought a black and white dog home in 1934 and named him Spike. This sculpture illustrates how Spike has evolved into the Snoopy we now see.
After a two-year stint in the military in the early 1940s, Sparky took a job at a school in Minnesota while developing his career as a comic creator. In June 1947, he published his first series of one-panel jokes called Li’l Folks, which would later become the Peanuts.
When I was younger, I somehow assumed that Charlie Brown and Snoopy were magically created on a particular day, and that’s how they have always looked. In reality, however, all the characters have been refined through thousands of iterations over the decades.
There were loads of fun displays throughout the museum. This wall was one of my favorites: Charlie Brown is so happy when Snoopy returns home from the hospital after being sick.
There is also Sally’s famous booth if you need psychiatric consultation.
Unlike the small comic books I read 25 years ago, the museum exhibits feature large prints, which make it easier to appreciate Sparky’s drawings. It’s amazing how these simple lines have created a lovely cast of human and non-human characters with distinct personalities.
Everything is material
While reading through Sparky’s life journey, I was most struck by how he drew inspiration from simple daily observations.
His childhood days in Minnesota inspired sledding, hockey, and ice skating in the stories. The elusive red-haired girl was based on a real girl named Donna, whom he met in school in 1961.
He also enjoyed baseball, golf, and football, so the characters often play those sports (though they never win).
Sparky also recalled being a poor student, failing most subjects in his younger days—a predicament reflected in Sally, who likewise struggles academically.
Sparky said in a documentary that he got many ideas from watching his children as they went on with their day or argued with each other. His first three kids inspired Linus’ safety blanket, for example.
Sparky produced an astounding volume of work throughout his life: 17,897 Peanuts Strips in total.
In his memoir My Life With Charlie Brown, Sparky once wrote, “I’m often asked where I get my ideas…They come from sitting in a room alone and drawing seven days a week, as I’ve done for 40 years.”
Since the newspapers needed daily submission, Sparky kept a fairly regimented routine during weekdays. He would rise early, drop off the kids at school, and work out of his studio for several hours, with a lunch break in between at the nearby Warm Puppy Cafe (still open on site). On the weekends, he would enjoy a variety of sports and spending time with friends and family.
His recreated studio was in the gallery on the second floor.
The museum intentionally left crumpled papers on the floor beside the trash can in the studio. Sparky used to warm up at the beginning of the day by doing spontaneous pencil sketches in his notebook. He discovered countless ideas from this process, though he often threw the initial doodles away.
His secretary would sometimes rescue the rough sketches from the garbage, take them home, and iron them flat again.
Now, we get to see these raw sketches.
The Fun Stuff
On the same floor was a surprisingly entertaining education center with materials for kids to do all sorts of artwork.
We opted for making an origami Snoopy’s house. The instruction was a bit hard to follow. Fortunately, a volunteer was there to do a demo for us. Otherwise, there was no way I could have figured it out!
Here are the final products—they are now sitting on my work desk.
Lastly, here are a few thought-provoking quotes sprinkled throughout the exhibits.
Final thoughts
Overall, this museum was a gem. The exhibits were well-curated. There weren’t too many visitors, and I had space to appreciate the work slowly.
This visit was also a walk down memory lane: It reminded me how Snoopy was my informal introduction to learning English and a shared interest with my mother. I also thought of my family’s dog as I walked the aisles.
Another lesson I learned is that achieving any given goal on the first attempt is unnecessary. A product that appears inevitable on the surface is always a culmination of hundreds of iterations behind the scenes.
I highly recommend checking out the museum if you like the Peanuts. If you are looking for a day trip idea to Sonoma, this will do nicely!