The Dunn Center, located on North Carolina Wesleyan University’s Campus, welcomes The Life and Art of Charles M. Schulz November 14, 2025 – January 29, 2026. This is a wonderful family show to attend and will feature all your favorite Peanuts characters. Secure your tickets, or purchase tickets as holiday gifts, by visiting https://ncwu.edu/dunn-center-performing-arts/.
Charles Monroe Schulz brightened the world for 50 years with his Peanuts comic strip, which debuted October 2, 1950. With Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and the rest of the lovable Peanuts gang, Schulz explored the emotional territory of friendship, disappointment, faith, and tolerance. He was an artist and a storyteller who transformed images of everyday life into art that captured the humor, vulnerability, and dignity of the human spirit. Through Peanuts, Schulz connected the world with his drawings and stories. The Life and Art of Charles M. Schulz, a traveling exhibition, explores Schulz’s personal history and his role as the sole inspiration and artistic talent behind Peanuts and its unique cast of characters. Schulz once proclaimed, “It seems beyond the comprehension of people that someone can be born to draw comic strips, but I think I was.”
The exhibition follows Schulz from his Minnesota roots to his life in California and tracks the development of the characters that make up the unique world of Peanuts. Thirty Peanuts comic strips, Schulz quotes, and photographs illuminate the story behind the creation of this most popular and influential cartoon strip. Comic strips by George Herriman (Krazy Kat), Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates), and Elzie C. Segar (Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye) shed light on how these prominent cartoonists influenced Schulz as a young artist and reveal the contrast of Schulz’s drawing style to the elaborately illustrated cartoons popular during the early 20th century.
“Comic strips are an art form: a means of expressing an idea of a great truth in an abbreviated space,” Schulz noted in 1985. He was “master of the slight incident” and broke new ground for newspaper cartoons by using innovations such as Lucy’s psychiatric booth, Linus’ security blanket (a term Schulz coined), Snoopy’s doghouse, and Schroeder’s music. He profoundly influenced several generations of cartoonists with his spare graphic style and subtle sense of humor. “With intelligence, honesty, and wonderfully expressive artwork, Charles Schulz gave the comics a unique world of humor, fantasy, warmth, and pain that completely reconfigured the comic strip landscape,” wrote Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, in 1989.
circa 1985
Schulz revolutionized the art of the comic strip through his single-handed dedication to the art, wit, and wisdom of Peanuts. For 50 years he researched, wrote, designed, and drew each Peanuts strip that appeared in daily and Sunday newspapers, producing nearly 18,000 strips. From the comic strip’s humble beginnings in 1950, appearing in only seven newspapers, Peanuts’ popularity and influence grew rapidly. By 2000 it was the most successful comic strip in newspaper history, appearing in over 40 languages, in 75 countries, in more than 2,600 newspapers, with over 355 million readers. The strip and its characters were also the inspiration for nearly 50 television specials, two plays, four movies, a symphonic concerto, many books, and thousands of licensed products. Peanuts products became a billion-dollar worldwide industry, and Schulz became the highest paid, most widely read cartoonist in history.
Schulz officially retired in December 1999 and always intended that the strip would retire with him. On February 12, 2000, at age 77, just hours before the final Peanuts strip appeared in Sunday newspapers, Charles Schulz died at his home in Santa Rosa, California. The next morning, tributes ran in newspapers around the world, including one from then-U.S. President Bill Clinton in USA Today: “The hopeful and hapless Charlie Brown, the joyful Snoopy, the soulful Linus, even the crabby Lucy, give voice, day after day, to what makes us human.” In the February 28, 2000, edition of People magazine, Rheta Grimsley Johnson, author of the 1989 biography Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz, observed, “He showed there was a market for innocence. People may be seduced by glitter, sophomoric stunts and shock radio, but deep down we all yearn for something simple and profound that will endure. He gave that to us.”
The Life and Art of Charles M. Schulz is organized and toured by the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, Santa Rosa, California.
ABOUT THE CHARLES M. SCHULZ MUSEUM AND RESEARCH CENTER
Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center
2301 Hardies Lane, Santa Rosa, CA 95403
(707) 579-4452 | schulzmuseum.org The Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center opened in 2002 to fulfill its mission of preserving, displaying, and interpreting the art of Charles M. Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, and building an understanding of cartoon art. Located 50 miles north of San Francisco in Sonoma County, California—where Schulz lived and worked for over 40 years—the Schulz Museum features the largest collection of original Peanuts comic strips in the world and presents changing exhibitions and programming for all ages. The museum also provides reference services and
