World video travel guide

News • Maryland • United States • 2011-09-26

Peanuts Exhibit Opens in October

Scientifically oriented interactive stations allow kids of all ages, from preschool to adults, to learn

more about and appreciate the wonders of the natural world.

Charles Schulz touched on many aspects of the natural world during the nearly 50 years he drew the

Peanuts comic strip. During the 1950s and 1960s, Schulz’s characters explored aspects of the natural

world with wonder and delight, and their hilarious, and sometimes misguided understanding of the

world around them afforded many opportunities to introduce readers of the strip to fun facts about

the natural world.

By the 1970s Schulz began to address the environment and ecology more directly as citizens of the

United States began to come to terms with issues of pollution of the air and water. President Richard

M. Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by executive order on December 2,

1970. Seven years later Schulz created a hilarious multi-day storyline in which Charlie Brown fears that

he has run afoul of the EPA. Throughout the remaining years of Peanuts, Schulz explored aspects of

the relationships between humans and the natural world.

The impact humans have on the world around us, and the interconnected relationship between humans

and Mother Earth, is explored through the everyday lives of the Peanuts characters as they appeared

each day in newspapers across the country.

Peanuts…Naturally gives older visitors a chance

to travel back in time as well as introduce new

audiences to a group of friends many of us grew

up with. The exhibition is included with

admission and is located on Level Three.

Peanuts Memorabilia Display

Do you still have your Peanuts lunch box? How about vintage Pez dispensers of “the gang?” Is your

vinyl Snoopy doll still sitting in the old toy box?

If you have Peanuts collectibles and memorabilia that you could lend to a display at the Maryland

Science Center during the run of the Peanuts…Naturally exhibition we’d like to hear from you.

The exhibit is a chance for visitors of all ages to re-connect with comic characters that many people

consider as childhood friends. The enduring nature of Peanuts comics, television shows, and toys is

as timeless as the messages artist Charles Schulz sought to impart through his daily drawings and TV

show productions. The Science Center would like to display some of the items from Peanuts’ past in

a complementary exhibit to accompany the new Peanuts…Naturally exhibit in October.

RSS • All news