Seuss’s inspirational hats display coming

COAST CITIES — For the first time in history, Theodore Geisel’s aka Dr. Seuss’s never-before-seen hat collection will be exhibited July 19 through Aug. 4, at Legends Gallery of La Jolla,1205 Prospect Street, Suite B, La Jolla, celebrating the 75th anniversary of Dr. Seuss’s second book “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.”

Audrey Geisel has opened the estate’s vault and allowed a selection of Geisel’s hats to visit select galleries across the country for the next year. This is the only time any of these hats have traveled outside the legendary “hat closet” at Seuss House, alongside his little-known Secret Art, a series of estate-authorized works adapted from Geisel’s original drawings, paintings, and sculpture. This historic collection will be available for viewing and purchase through the run of the exhibition.

In his artwork, as in his personal life, Geisel saw hats as transformational. And from the time he was a small boy in Springfield, Massachusetts, he was aware of their inherent magic. Far beyond their functionality, hats were the accent — the exclamation point — on a person’s behavior.

The first recorded mention of the Dr. Seuss hat collection came from his sister, Marnie, who visited him in New York in the autumn of 1937. She reported in the Springfield Union-News, Nov. 28, 1937, “Ted has another peculiar hobby—that of collecting hats of every description. Why, he must have several hundred and he is using them as the foundation of his next book. I have seen him put on an impromptu show for guests, using the hats as costumes. He has kept a whole party in stitches just by making up a play with kitchen knives and spoons for the actors.”

That “next book”— Dr. Seuss’s second of 44 — became The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.