Thank You 2021 Hat City Ball Sponsors & Advertisers!

---

The Danbury Museum is very excited about this year's Hat City Ball! We hope you’ll join us in celebrating the love we ALL feel for our Danbury community—past and present—Valentine’s Day weekend 2021! Many of you have expressed trepidation regarding our usual event spectacular, and we get it, we’re uncertain too! The rules keep changing, AND we don’t want to catch or share COVID or the flu, AND what do we wear to match our masks? Soooo many questions?!? We’ve pulled together an FAQ to help answer and enlighten...and encourage your (safe) participation.

Where and when is the most talked about event of the season happening? Why, the Amber Room Colonnade, of course, at 1 Stacey Road, Danbury, on Friday, February 12, 2021!

How do we get tickets to this exclusive event? Online! Tickets may be purchased via the museum website, through February 5th. No tickets will be sold the week of the event. You’ll receive an e-confirmation and all you’ll need to show at the event is your receipt, so very easy!

Is this a traditional ball event? No, nope, not going to kid ourselves, not going to happen, sorry. At this time, we are planning an “order in advance” meal purchase that you pick up the night of the event and an online auction with local delivery to auction winners. 

How does THAT work? Well, you buy your tickets and choose your meal preference, receive an email confirmation. The night of the event you drive up, suitably attired, put your car in park under the veranda and wait just a few minutes for your to-go celebratory dinner to be delivered to your car. You then head home, and enjoy! 

But I wanted a sit down dinner with my friends and live entertainment! Yes, we do too. And we hear you—please note we’ve adjusted our prices to reflect the change in format (for this year only) and we are hopeful to go back to the lavish splash of dining, mingling, and dancing in support of the museum's endeavors, in 2022.

The silent auction, that sounds fabulous, how do I participate? The silent auction will be hosted by 32Auctions filled with baskets and gifts sure to spark joy in the heart of February—and maybe double as a Valentine’s gift—regifting is “green,” responsible, and encouraged! When you are perusing the auction selection from your device at home, everyone will be using the same online platform to bid on, or purchase now, the items you are interested in—it’s a live synchronous silent auction! Links to the silent auction will be available before the event, emailed directly to you and on the museum website. You can get a glimpse of how that works by visiting 32Auctions.com in advance and checking out their other online auctions.

Why should we support the museum? It’s been closed for months? Correct, the Danbury Museum has been closed to the general public for months, since the middle of March 2020, actually. But, our crew is a “turn lemons into lemonade” bunch, and we've used this time to accomplish behind the scenes projects to make our visitor experience, our researcher experience, and our student experience more fulfilling, for when we can safely reopen. Your support matters, it’s helped us accomplish a long list of tasks and ensures that, post COVID, there will be a museum to open. One out of every three US museums is expected to close as an unfortunate side effect of COVID; we are determined that, with your support, the Danbury Museum will not close, but instead will thrive, and grow, and be right here—a critical part of our community infrastructure—post COVID.

That’s so interesting, please tell me more about what the museum has been up to?  

• We’ve engaged over 75,000 people each month, since March, via our social media feeds (some months we’ve reached OVER 100,000!)
• Created fabulous weekly then monthly newspapers to keep our friends and supporters engaged 
• Continued the work to create (thanks to the generous support of Savings Bank of Danbury) an outstanding Charles Ives Birthplace exhibit 
• Designed and installed FIVE outdoor exhibits on our Main Street Campus
• Painted the interior of the Rider House, the interior and exterior of the Little Red Schoolhouse and the interior and partial exterior of the Marian Anderson studio 
• Continued accessioning new (to us) artifacts and ephemeral donations (thank you Danbury community for cleaning out during COVID!)
• Curated multiple new online exhibits as well as our fabulous #MuseumFromHome page on our website filled with Danbury themed puzzles, games and publications in pdf format
• Designed an easy to access and order online gift shop, not replacing our little shop on Main Street, but adding another pathway for our customers to purchase fun new Danbury themed items, like masks! 

Honestly, we are pretty tired! We’ve attended weekly Zoom sessions with museum colleagues from institutions all across the country and the northeast. We’ve upped our skill sets in several areas and we’ve tried our best to be as “there” as we could be whilst, like everyone else, working new schedules, creating home “academies” for our kids, and spraying everything, everywhere with cleaner whilst masked!

How do I follow the adventures of the Danbury Museum, so that I stay engaged while I’m waiting to attend the HCB 2021? Follow us on Instagram and Twitter @DanburyMuseum, and on Facebook at DanburyMuseumAndHistoricalSociety.

I’d like to support the Danbury Museum, but I’ll be traveling or out of town on 2/12, how can I donate? Thank you so much! You can always send your donation directly to the Danbury Museum at 43 Main Street, Danbury, CT, 06810, or, you can save a stamp and donate through our website by clicking the donate button HERE.