by Robert Waterhouse
It’s not quite a Mediterranean setting. St Petersburg on Tampa Bay , Florida , has a whiff of the tropics, with balmy Gulf of Mexico tides home to the manatee and the pelican. But the Salvador Dali Museum , built to house the magnificent collection of the American industrialist A Reynolds Morse and his wife Eleanor Reese, is at least as important to the Dali legacy as the renowned Theatre-Museum in his home town of Figueres , Catalonia , where the artist is buried. This, simply, is the most complete Dali representation anywhere, displayed with true American flair for clarity and accessibility.
Though the present museum is just 25 years old, work began last December on a new $35m gallery relocated to St Pete’s cultural waterfront, where a 50% increase in floor space will allow permanent display of the collection’s 96 Dali oils, together with a much wider selection of its many other Dali works and artefacts. More importantly, the collection will become storm proof. In a region ever more prone to hurricanes, architect Yann Weymouth’s (1) concept is centred on a reinforced concrete cube, a so-called “treasure box”, with all the priceless artwork located on the third floor, above the floodplain, reached from the foyer by an open staircase intended to echo Dali’s fascination with the spiral enigma. The façade is wrapped by a geodesic glass bubble (also storm-resistant), enclosing non-gallery spaces.