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Some Peanuts original artwork missing, perhaps in Riverside
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Some Peanuts original artwork missing, perhaps in Riverside
Some Peanuts original artwork missing, perhaps in Riverside
Eight years after the death of cartoonist Charles Schulz, his classic "Peanuts" strips still run daily in hundreds of newspapers. An exhibit of Schulz's work is now open at Riverside Metropolitan Museum. As KPCC's Steven Cuevas found out, some of the original artwork for those strips is missing, perhaps lost in the Inland Empire.
Steven Cuevas: Charles Schulz came to Riverside in 1975.
Maggie Weatherbee: To cover the Powder Puff Derby, which was a women's flying race. And the reason he was covering it was because his wife and her mother were flyers in the race.
Cuevas: Maggie Weatherbee. is a curator at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum. Schulz himself was apparently terrified of small planes. Anyway, in 1975, fliers in the week-long transcontinental race took off from Riverside Municipal Airport.
Weatherbee: And so he did a series of eight comic strips.
Cuevas: In them, the characters Peppermint Patty and Marcie lease Snoopy's Sopwith Camel, actually Snoopy's doghouse, and enter the Derby.
Weatherbee: Two of them are shown here, and we actually have the one that says "Riverside, California" in it. Which is right here.
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Cuevas: These, however, are reproductions – on loan from the Schultz Museum in Santa Rosa. As for the originals?
Weatherbee: There's a story that the originals to those were hanging at the airport at one time, the city-owned airport, and we're trying to figure out where they are.
Cuevas: Because...
Weatherbee: Because, of course, if they are originals, they would be worth a whole bunch, and they would need to be in the museum's care, just so they were safe!
Cuevas: Yeah.
Weatherbee: Not stuck in a closet somewhere! (laughs)
Cuevas: Artwork from an original "Peanuts" daily strip can fetch as much as $40,000 at auction. A more elaborate Sunday strip can earn more than twice that. The "Peanuts at Bat" exhibit, emphasizing Charles Schulz's take on baseball, runs through September at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum.
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