Dali paintings on way from St. Pete to Atlanta for show

Some famous pieces of art are missing from the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg.

It's not a heist. The museum is sending several paintings to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta for an exhibition called "Salvador Dali: The Late Work."

This morning, museum workers began packing the Ecumenical Council, painted in 1960. An assistant curator will travel with the painting as it's trucked to Atlanta and will watch while it's installed.

"There's always concern when you're moving a painting around that it might suffer damage," said Joan Kropf, the curator at the Salvador Dali Museum.

The museum never loaned pieces until 1995, Kropf said. Since then, it's loaned several paintings to museums around the world, including Japan, France and Australia. She said the Ecumenical Council painting is a popular one because it's smaller and can fit in airplane cargo holds.

"It's exciting to be able to share the artwork with people around the world," she said this morning.

The exhibition in Atlanta includes more than 40 paintings and drawings the artist created after 1930 and includes pieces flown in from museums in Scotland and Canada. One painting, Christ of St. John of the Cross (1951), has not been seen in the United States in more than 50 years. The exhibition will be on display from Aug. 7 through Jan. 9.

The artwork from the Salvador Dali Museum will then be shipped back to St. Petersburg so it can be hung in time for the grand opening of the new Dali Museum on Jan. 11, 2011. The $35 million project broke ground in December. The 66,500-square-foot building will showcase the largest collection of Dali artwork outside of the artist's native Spain.

The original museum, which opened in 1982, houses one of the most extensive collections of the works of the Spanish surrealist. The museum's collection is valued at more than $500 million.

On the web:

Salvador Dali Museum: http://www.salvadordalimuseum.org/

High Museum of Art: http://www.high.org/main.taf?p=3,2,1,19,1