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Dali museum in St. Pete needs financial help

Dali Museum

The Enigma, a glass structure inspired by Salvador Dali, will feature prominently on the new museum.

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By CLOE CABRERA

ccabrera@tampatrib.com

Published: June 25, 2009

ST. PETERSBURG - The new $35 million Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg is on pace for a January 2011 opening, but the museum still needs about $9 million to complete construction.

Museum officials said Wednesday that they are hoping to raise the money through donations from the public.

"We are going up in rapid-fire pace," said Marcia Crawley, the museum's director of development. "In this economy, we want people to have real faith in the project."

Museum officials broke ground in December on the 66,500-square-foot building, which will showcase the largest collection of Dali artwork outside of the artist's native Spain.

The new museum will include galleries, a theater, 150-seat community room, cafe, gift shop and sculpture garden.

The central architectural feature will be a geodesic glass "Enigma" that encloses a foyer and grand spiral staircase while providing a view of the waterfront.

Most importantly, the new building, which is a few blocks north of the current museum, is hurricane-resistant and will be able to withstand a Category 5 storm, said Henri Hine, the museum's director.

The current museum is vulnerable, Hine said, and when a storm threatens, it takes museum officials three days to move the artwork into a vault.

The Dali Museum draws about 200,000 visitors and has an economic impact of $60 million each year, Hine said. The original museum, which opened in 1982, houses one of the most extensive collections of the works of the Spanish surrealist, valued at more than $500 million.

At 30,000 square feet, the current museum is too small to display Dali's art and temporary collections from other artists.

"The artwork is the value of the museum. That's why it's a top international destination in the state," Hine said.

Money for the new museum is coming from state matching grants, donations and the sale of the existing building to the University of South Florida.

Along with the new 66,000-square-foot Tampa Museum of Art, expected to open in early 2010, the new Dali museum will help raise the Tampa Bay area's arts profile nationally and internationally, Hine said.

"We're all colleagues," he said. "We have a common goal to increase the richness and meaningfulness of people's lives with art. I think as we grow in this new building all boats will rise with the tide and bring more people to the area to avail themselves to all cultural amenities."

Museum officials have set up a live Web cam for visitors to see the museum's progress at www.salvadordalimuseum.org.

Reporter Cloe Cabrera can be reached at (813) 259-7656.

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