The Chicagoist will be launching later but in the meantime please enjoy our archives.

Museum Of Science And Industry Introduces Charlie Brown And The Great Exhibit

By Samantha Abernethy in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 29, 2012 4:00PM

The Museum of Science and Industry debuted its latest exhibit "Charlie Brown and the Great Exhibit" on Thursday featuring the life and work of Charles Schulz. Schulz created 17,897 Peanuts comic strips during his career. If you ever wondered how Pigpen got his name, what inspired Schulz or how animation works, this is for you. The exhibit features the history of the history of Schulz, including some of his pre-Peanuts works and the first 10 Peanuts strips. Curators also constructed a replica of the studio where Schulz worked.

The museum also displayed story-lines for each of the Peanuts characters, including some of the minor characters that you may have forgotten, like Spike and Marbles. We didn't know the Peanuts debuted as babies, and little Charlie had maybe even less hair then. The exhibit features a station for each Peanuts holiday celebration plus a play area for children to imagine what is inside Snoopy's doghouse and play on Schroeder's oversized grand piano. Did you know Schulz accurately transcribed the notes from famous pieces of music into Schroeder's performances?

The Museum of Science and Industry is located at 5700 S. Lake Shore Drive. The "Charlie Brown and the Great Exhibit" requires a separate ticket, and it runs through Monday, Feb. 18.