The Dali Museum celebrates the life & works of Salvador Dali
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St. Petersburg (Fl, USA), Jun 11 (Medium): The Dali Museum, situated in St. Petersburg, Florida is an art museum and celebrates the life and works of Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) by providing delightful and educational exhibits to the visitors.
The Dali Museum is an active resource in the cultural life, of not only the community of St. Petersburg, Florida but also the world community.
The original Dali Museum opened in St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.A in 1982 to bring the Morses’ collection of Salvador Dali’ s works to the area. Dali was one of the most celebrated artists of all time and the mastermind behind this museum.
The Dali’s new building reportedly opened on January 11, 2011, and combines the rational with the fantastical.
The entrance to the museum is through The Dali Museum Store, on the first floor, which features the largest collection of Dali-inspired merchandise in the world.
Second Floor houses The Dali Museum library, a unique resource for scholars, art professionals, collectors and students studying Salvador Dali, Surrealism and the Avant-garde. This supports the Museum’s mission to serve as an active resource in the cultural life of our community and the world at large.
The library houses the Center for the Avant-garde, which undertakes scholarship and supports scholars in the investigation of the historic Avant-garde and its legacies. The administrative offices of the Museum are also located on this floor.
The library holds over 7,000 volumes; exhibition and sale catalogs; video, sound recordings and special collections on Salvador Dali’s work, his life, and other artists as well as genres related to Surrealism and the Avant-garde.
Special Collections include rare books, collectible books, manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, whole magazine collections and magazine, and newspaper clippings. The library also contains the donated collection of New York collector and Dali archivist, Albert Field. The Field Collection consists of over 400 books, catalogs, limited prints, objects, and research documents.
Applied research is conducted by the Museum staff specifically related to exhibitions and art history publications. The result of this research includes wall labels and text panels, exhibition brochures and educational material for docents.
The Library is open to scholars and researchers who have a specifically-defined project.
It is on the third floor, that all of the galleries are located. The James Family Wing holds the permanent collection of Dali’s works. The Hough Family Wing shares special exhibitions.
The collection includes over 2,000 works in every medium of his artistic activity including 96 oil paintings, many original drawings, book illustrations, prints, sculpture, photos, manuscripts and an extensive archive of documents.
Dali and Magritte’s use of images of holes sometimes goes beyond blocking the viewer’s vision. One looks through holes but often sees something different than the expected and confounding the inner and outer vision.
This exhibition examines the work and relationship of Belgium Surrealist painter Rene Magritte and the Spanish painter Salvador Dali. Magritte and Dali embody the goals of Surrealism by challenging the notion of what is real.
Both used direct and pictorial representation, creating worlds where everything is recognizable, yet the details and relationships are radically changed and defy rational explanation presenting the enigmatic within the familiar.
The six categories in which the works of Dali are portrayed are: Objects, Prints, Photographs, Works on Paper, Paintings and Book Illustration.
Examples of objects, as one of the gallery collection, are seen below:
The City of Drawers bowl in clear crystal is simple in shape on which Dalí portrayed a highly surrealistic seated figure and also superbly adapted to the transparent Steuben glass. The Steuben glass is today the leading and most highly valued products of the American glass industry.
The Lobster Telephone, the other title for Aphrodisiac Telephone is reportedly one of Dalí‘s most surreal and striking creations of an actual working telephone which is made of Bakelite with a plaster of Paris lobster.
A special exhibition, sponsored by Tampa International Airport, uses burgeoning augmented reality (AR) technology to engage visitors while highlighting The Dali’s complete collection of its popular, Masterworks.
The term “masterworks” used by Dali Museum founder A. Reynolds Morse, refers to paintings exceeding five feet in height or width, painted over a period of a year or longer — in other words, they are both monumental in scale and critical Dali paintings. Through this exhibit, Museum visitors have an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the meaning behind these Salvador Dali works through the lens of AR.
(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)