Mud Pies and Jelly Beans

Exhibition Website

Sep 16 2017 - Mar 11 2018

It’s only fitting that a cartoon named Peanuts includes many playful jokes about food. Patty and Violet are expert mud pie makers, Charlie Brown hates coconut (just like Schulz himself did), and Snoopy thinks about pizza, cookies, and the next meal that will be brimming from his dog dish. View the funniest food-centric comic strips from our collection in this exhibition that is sure to make you laugh. . . just don’t come hungry!

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Whether or not you go, Only What's Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts reproduces the best of the Peanuts newspaper strip, all shot from the original art by award-winning photographer Geoff Spear. Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000) believed that the key to cartooning was to take out the extraneous details and leave in only what’s necessary. For 50 years, from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, Schulz wrote and illustrated Peanuts, the single most popular and influential comic strip in the world. In all, 17,897 strips were published, making it “arguably the longest story ever told by one human being,” according to Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. For Only What’s Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts, renowned designer Chip Kidd was granted unprecedented access to the extraordinary archives of the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa, California. Only What's Necessary also features exclusive, rare, and unpublished original art and developmental work—much of which has never been seen before.

Only What's Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts

  • Works on Paper
  • American
  • 20th Century
  • Fantasy / Comic
  • Charles M. Schulz

Exhibition Venues & Dates