The Dali Museum: The Surrealist Masterpiece Collection on the St. Petersburg Waterfront

The Salvador Dali Museum sits on the waterfront in downtown St. Petersburg, and the building itself looks like something Dali might have dreamed up. A massive free-form glass structure called the Enigma wraps around one side of the concrete shell, bulging outward like a bubble about to burst. It is one of the most photographed buildings in Florida, and it has not even been open fifteen years.

How the Collection Got to Florida

The story starts with A. Reynolds Morse and Eleanor Morse, a Cleveland couple who began buying Dali paintings in 1943 after seeing a retrospective at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Over the next four decades, they built the largest private collection of Dali’s work in the world. When they needed a permanent home for the collection, they looked at cities across the country. St. Petersburg won, partly because of the light and partly because the city wanted them.

The original museum opened in 1982 in a converted warehouse. The current building, designed by architect Yann Weymouth, opened in 2011 and cost $36 million. It was built to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, which is the kind of practical Florida detail that Dali himself would have appreciated.

What You Will Find Inside

The museum holds more than 2,400 objects, including 96 oil paintings, over 100 watercolors and drawings, and 1,300 photographs, sculptures, and prints. The collection spans Dali’s entire career, from his earliest Impressionist experiments to the monumental canvases of his later years. The crown jewels are the large-scale masterworks, including The Hallucinogenic Toreador and The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, both of which are too big to fit in most other galleries.

Visiting

The Dali Museum is located at One Dali Boulevard in St. Petersburg, right on Tampa Bay. It is open daily, and timed tickets are recommended. The avant-garden outside the building is free to walk, and the view of the bay from the museum steps at sunset is worth the trip even if you never go inside.