St. Pete enlists Dalí among its Florida allures

February 06, 2011|Ellen Albanese, Globe Correspondent

ST. PETERSBURG — “Our Golden Gate Bridge’’: This is the way city and tourism officials describe the new building that houses one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of Salvador Dalí. The stunning structure — a concrete box wrapped in a futuristic swirl of glass reflecting the palm-studded Tampa Bay shoreline — opened last month, and it’s destined to be as much of a draw as the surrealist master’s works themselves.

The new Dalí Museum is the latest in a series of developments that have dramatically expanded this city’s arts offerings, leading American Style magazine to name St. Petersburg the nation’s top midsize city for art in 2010. Last July, the Morean Arts Center opened the long-awaited Chihuly Collection in a new 10,000-square-foot space on Beach Drive; it’s the only permanent installation in the world of the works of glass artist Dale Chihuly. In 2008 the Museum of Fine Arts opened a new wing, doubling its exhibition space. And along Central Avenue, a formerly distressed neighborhood has been rehabbed as an artists’ enclave, with studios, galleries, and vintage clothing stores.

The heart of downtown runs along the shore from the Dalí Museum to the Renaissance Vinoy Resort, a Mediterranean Revival gem that has been restored to its 1925 grandeur. In this pretty, walkable stretch, you’ll find Chihuly Collection and several galleries. Head west on Central Avenue to the emerging 600 block and the Morean Arts Center, which has added a 4,000-square-foot glass studio and hot shop to support and train glass artists and let the public see the primitive process at the core of the large-scale installations for which Chihuly is known.

The Dalí Museum began with a charge to protect the collection — 96 oils, more than 100 watercolors and drawings, and more than 1,300 works on paper, sculptures, objets d’art, and photographs. The paintings, from the private collection of A. Reynolds and Eleanor Morse, represent the largest collection of Dalí works outside Spain. The 18-inch-thick walls are designed to withstand a category 5 hurricane, and the collection is housed on the third floor, above the reach of the stormiest sea. But the goal, said architect Yann Weymouth of HOK, was a building that reflected the spirit of the freethinking Dalí (1904-89).