Exhibition a tip of the hat to Dr. Seuss
There are Chinese caps, marching band busbys and black-and-white convict caps. There’s a teeny tiny sombrero, a nicely stitched naval cap and a f loppy felt chapeau or two. There’s even a towering stovepipe top hat with wide bands of red and white — just like the one worn by the Cat in the Hat.
They’re all part of an eclectic collection of headgear once owned by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) and scheduled to stop at a Beverly Hills art gallery this month. The touring “Hats Off to Dr. Seuss!” exhibition kicked off at the New York Public Library in 2013 as part of the 75th-anniversary celebration of Geisel’s second book, “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.” So naturally the display includes a Cubbins-appropriate red felt cap with a sloping crown and single white feather as well as other crazy lids the good doctor (who died in 1991) had amassed as part of an extensive personal hat collection.
The converted steamer trunk of hats has made its way to Southern California in the past, with earlier stops in La Jolla and San Diego, but the run at EC Gallery in Beverly Hills will mark its first stop in Los Angeles County.
The EC Gallery, 229 S. Beverly Drive, will host the hat exhibit — along with prints and sculpture from the “Art of Dr. Seuss” collection — starting Friday through May 10. A meet-the-curator event is scheduled from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday.
The full schedule of the touring hat exhibit can be found at www.drseussart.com/hatsoff.