Salvador Dalí Museum

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Salvador Dalí, The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, 1959, oil on canvas, 410 x 284 cm, on display at the museum.

The Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, houses the largest collection of works of the artist Salvador Dalí outside of Europe.

Shortly before marrying in 1942, A. Reynolds Morse and his wife Eleanor R. Morse attended a Dalí retrospective at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Intrigued by the artist’s subject matter, and impressed by his draftsmanship, they bought their first painting a year later. The purchase began a 40-year relationship as patrons and friends of Dalí that resulted in a comprehensive collection of original Dalí work.

Until 1971, the Morses displayed their collection in their Cleveland, Ohio, home. When they loaned over 200 pieces to a Dalí retrospective in 1965, they realized that 25 years of collecting produced a mini-retrospective that needed a permanent home.

In 1971, with Dalí presiding over the opening, the Morses opened a museum adjacent to their office building in Beachwood, Ohio. By the end of the decade with an overwhelming number of visitors, the Morses decided to again move their collection.

After a search that drew national attention, a marine warehouse in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida was rehabilitated and the museum opened on March 10, 1982.

The museum's collection includes 95 oil paintings, over 100 watercolors and drawings, 1,300 graphics, photographs, sculptures and objects d'art, and an extensive archival library, and displays are periodically rotated.

The museum is home to 7 of the 18 masterwork paintings by Dalí (including The Hallucinogenic Toreador and The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus), the most of any museum in the world. To be considered a masterwork these paintings must be at least 5 feet in any direction and have been worked on for over a year.

In addition to displaying the work of Dalí, the museum aims to educate the public and promote understanding, enjoyment and scholarly examination of art through the exhibition of works by Dalí and artists of similar vision.

With the Dalí Theater-Museum created by Dalí himself in his home town of Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, St. Petersburg's Dalí museum has one of the world's largest collections of Dalí's works.