By Dan Murphy
In keeping with this year’s Victorian Masquerade Party theme, guests in attendance at this year’s 28th annual benefit for the Gibson House Museum on Thursday, April 24, at the Chilton Club will be encouraged to don masks, especially face coverings of the “amusing, artistic kind.”
Robert B. Dimmick, Janet Dracksdorf, and Stephanie Fletcher are seen enjoying the Gibson House Museum annual benefit in 2023 at the St. Botolph Club. (Dimmick will return again this year as the event emcee.)
“People are invited to dress up, even though it’s an early evening, and to wear masks,” said Susan Ashbrook, a museum board member and benefit committee member who has been involved with the event every year since its inception.
This year, guests will enjoy with creative cocktails, a variety of hors d’oeuvres, and piano music, along with a few surprises, in an event meant to evoke the spirit of a 19th-century Masquerade.
The event will also offer a benefit raffle, which is now live online and includes a tour of the Beauport, the Sleeper-McCann House, a National Historic Landmark in Gloucester, a Boston Athenaeum membership; two tickets to a performance of the musical, ‘The Light in the Piazza,’ at the Huntington Theatre; a food bundle from Eataly containing cocktail ingredients; an ‘Instant Wine Cellar,’with a variety of six bottles of curated wine; and dinner at a variety of area restaurants, including at Mistral in the South End and at La Padrona – Chef Jody Adams new Italian restaurant at Raffles hotel, among other items. (You don’t need to be present at the benefit to win raffle items.)
The annual benefit is the Gibson House Museum’s biggest fundraiser each year. All proceeds from the event will benefit the Gibson House Museum – the Back Bay’s only house museum, as well as the only authentic house museum in the City of Boston, “in that it was lived there by three generations of the same family and never used for any other purpose,” noted Ashbrook.
“All the contents are authentic to the family, so it’s a time capsule into a way of life among a certain wealthy class of Bostonians,” added Ashbrook. “We also highlight the lives of the servants who worked for the family, and the house still has its original kitchen and service areas.”
The Gibson House Museum offers a range of different tours, including ‘Charlie Gibson’s Queer Boston,’ which draws inspiration from the museum’s founder, Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., who was a writer, a preservationist, and a gay man.
For Pride Month in June, the museum is planning a number of events and activities based on the Gibson House’s rich LGBTQ+ history, said Ashbrook.
Meanwhile, the Gison House Museum’s annual fundraiser originally began as a Sunday tea at the Four Seasons, and about five years later, it became an evening event with wine.
Although the Chilton Club has served as the event venue before, the annual benefit, which has a different theme each time, was held at the St. Botolph Club the past few years.
“It’s a bit of a departure,” said Ashbrook of the event’s return to the Chilton Club this year.
As for what guests can expect this year, Ashbrook said, “It’s just going to be a fun evening. There aren’t going to be any speakers. It’s just a fun party with good food and creative cocktails.”
A Victorian Masquerade Party – the Gibson House Museum’s 28th annual benefit – will take place on Thursday, April 24, from 6 to 8 p.m., at the Chilton Club, 152 Commonwealth Ave.
For more information on the event, and to purchase benefit and raffle tickets, visit https://www.thegibsonhouse.org/museum-benefit.