Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
The place behind the detail.
Two collectors, a city that wanted their collection and a building made to withstand storms offer several ways into the story of The Dalí Museum.
On this page
Two collectors
Reynolds and Eleanor Morse began collecting Dalí’s work in 1943 and were his patrons and friends for forty years. They showed the collection at home in Cleveland and, from 1971, in a museum in Beachwood, Ohio.
When they looked for a larger home for it, a community campaign brought the collection to St. Petersburg, where the museum opened in a converted marine warehouse in 1982.
Glass and concrete
The present building by Yann Weymouth of HOK opened in 2011 beside the Mahaffey Theater on the downtown waterfront. Its 18-inch concrete walls are designed to protect the collection from hurricanes.
Its glass Enigma, 75 feet tall, encloses a spiral staircase. In 2012 the American Institute of Architects’ Florida chapter included the building in its list of 100 places marking a century of Florida architecture.
A collection of masterworks
The museum holds 96 of Dalí’s oil paintings and more than a thousand other works and objects, including several of his largest canvases.
This history belongs to the place and the people who shaped it. The History page offers a longer introduction, and the timeline gives a short route through selected milestones.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
