Bonnet Bash 2024: The Gilded Age

Founded in 1898, the National Arts Club is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission to stimulate, foster, and promote public interest in the arts and to educate the American people in the fine arts. Annually, the Club offers more than 150 free programs—both in-person and virtually—to the public, including exhibitions, theatrical and musical performances, lectures, and readings, attracting an audience of over 30,000 in-person visitors and thousands more online. The NAC is also a proud community partner, serving the public through fellowships, concert series, youth education programs, and more. For a full list of events or to learn more, please visit nationalartsclub.org.

The National Arts Club

You have been cordially invited by Nina Urban, Bonnet Bash chair and NAC Fashion Committee co-chairs David Zyla and Catherine Kleszczewski.

Continue celebrating the National Arts Club’s 125th anniversary season at the annual Bonnet Bash with timely interpretations of period headwear in a one-night-only installation by designers of the New York Milliners Guild. Gaze upon prodigious Directoires, grandiloquent Gainsboroughs and other scintillating bonnets set in our own interpretation of the Rosecliff Ballroom and enjoy music and performances bridging the last one and a quarter century.Dress as if for Mrs. Vanderbilt’s Ball and don your own headdress for a chance to beguile our judges and win the “Most Gilded” (best period hat), “Robber Baron” (most opulent or outrageous), or “Victorian Inventor” (best technical design) award.<a href="https://www.millinersguild.org/" title="https://www.millinersguild.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">The Milliners Guild, Inc</a>. is a not-for-profit organization of US millinery small-business owners, milliners, and students, specializing in handmade headwear and committed to increasing the public profile of millinery. Its members have won international prizes and exhibited nationally at venerable institutions such as FIT, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Arts Club, among others.--------National Arts Club Members should please RSVP with our dining room office or <a href="https://www.nationalartsclub.org" title="https://www.nationalartsclub.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">members-only website portal.</a>---------Enjoy the millinery installation in an interactive environment designed by large scale sculptor, scenic artist, and set designer Launa Eddy, with the support of Brooklyn ACME Props. Have your turn-of-the-century fortunes revealed at the Divination Station by Sarah Sparkles Crystal Art &amp; Astrology Readings, and learn about 19th century technology with the Museum of Interesting Things. Be transported to the Gilded Age all evening with tunes by DJ Erik Rydju and a timeless performance by singer and performer Darker Dawn. The musical highlight of the evening will be operatic arias and duets by Anastasiya Roytman, soprano, and Kofi Hayford, bass, accompanied by Anna Khanina on piano. Ana Roytman is one of the most exciting emerging operatic talents and has performed with the Bolshoi Theater, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and at Carnegie Hall, among many others. She is the first prize recipient of the international “Wiener Festivalbrücken” competition in Vienna, a New York Lyric Opera competition finalist, and a Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions encouragement award recipient. Prize-winning Ghanaian-American bass Kofi Hayford possesses a distinct sound with a unique timbre. He has over 40 operatic roles under his belt and has performed with The Metropolitan Opera Guild, Fort Worth Opera, Indianapolis Opera, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and more. As always, themed specialty cocktails and a free hat-station for those bare-headed will be available.

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