In my last posting, I showed this view of St. Petersburg's new Dali Museum. Now we'll go inside for an Opening Day tour!
One enters and leaves the Dali Museum through a colorful store that's a repository of all things surreal. Every imaginable book pertaining to surrealism is represented, as well as books on subject matter that interested Dali, such as the Golden Mean.
Next to the gift shop is this classic Rolls-Royce, covered in seaweed and snails. The driver wears antique diving gear and the passenger is a mermaid.
The windows are designed to appear as though it's always raining inside the car, and lighting and sound effects evoke a thunderstorm.
The ground floor has a café with a sitting area, as well as a counter with these cool stools.
After the geodesic glass, the focus of the museum's interior is a spiraling staircase, modeled after the DNA double helix. It was a shape that intrigued Salvador Dali.
The view is of the St. Petersburg bayfront, and Tampa Bay.
I thought this tangent structure was interesting.
Some of Salvador Dali's most famous works are actually surprisingly small. Beginning in 1948, though, Dali worked on a monumental scale, and these later pieces are referred to as "masterworks." I would have loved to have shown you peeks into the galleries, but museum rules forbid photographing those areas. Suffice to say, masterworks abound in the most comprehensive collection of Dali, and the largest collection of his work beyond Spain.
1 Dali Blvd., on the St. Petersburg bayfront,
at the southern end of Bayshore Drive SE
Hours: 10-5:30 p.m., Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday
10 a.m.-8 p.m., Thursday • Noon-5:30 p.m., Sunday
Mark this is so fascinating,thank you for sharing this amazing Dali Museum with us!
ReplyDeleteBe sure to come and enter my Giveaway from Blydesign......
Xoxo
Karena
Art by Karena
When I see the geodesic elements, I am reminded of Fuller's U.S. pavilion at Montreal's Expo 67. Here the elements have evolved from something purely geometric to something faintly organic. I tend to reference the past more than is fashionable, but somehow I would like to have seen a traditional element, almost pastiche style, in the design. I think of Dali's art as often having references to the classical and representational, so I would like to have seen a nod to the past in the architecture.
ReplyDeleteWe just went here! I have lots of pictures in my album "New Dalí Museum (2011_0129)"
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Thanks for visiting, Eugenio! Your photographs remind me that there are activities for young children at the Dali.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was little, I visited this collection, which was then housed in a kind of warehouse in Beachwood, Ohio (near Cleveland). I have always regretted that Cleveland lost this interesting museum.
ReplyDeleteI hope you can visit the new Dali Museum someday. I believe that it displays the entire Morse collection. Cleveland and several other areas around the country had ample opportunity to own the collection, but a number of museums balked at the stipulation that the whole collection was to be displayed.
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