It’s fitting that the first thing you encounter at the entrance the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa is this charming statue of one of his most famous creations, Charlie Brown.

Considering the success and influence of Charles M. Schulz’s work, it’s no wonder he deserves a museum. His world-famous cartoon strip Peanuts ran continuously for fifty years, published in 75 countries and translated into 21 languages. As if those numbers were not impressive enough, Schulz did the inking and lettering in his work, in addition to the drawings and story ideas.

Built a couple blocks away from his original home studio, the museum has the largest collection of Peanuts comics and some permanent exhibits like the Peanuts Tile Mural by Yoshiteru Otani featuring the iconic image of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown comprised of ceramic tiles with comic strips printed on them,

and a wood sculpture made by the same office featuring the evolution of Snoopy’s image over the strip’s 50 year life.

One of the temporary exhibits we saw was called Name-Dropping. Schulz managed to get many famous names into his strip story lines. The name-dropping consistently occurred over the strip’s 50 year lifetime, so as you can see below, we got see both the older and more modern drawings of Charlie Brown:

You’ve got to respect a man who is able to both casually mention a list of famous composers and hockey’s Great One.