The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg opened at it's new location earlier this month (on 1/11/11 at 11:11:)). It houses the largest collection of Dali paintings outside of Spain and the largest collection of Dali's 'masterworks'. For a painting to qualify as a masterwork it has to be at least 5 feet in one direction and have taken over a year to create. Seven of Dali's 18 masterworks are at this museum and the sheer scale of them gave me a new appreciation for the vast amount of work involved in some of his paintings. The new museum is right on the water in an appropriately quirky building and we had to wait about 40 mins to get in since Sunday is their busiest day and they had record attendance figures since they re-opened.
Sometimes kids just can't get into the blogging spirit...:)
My favorite was
Hallucinogenic Toreador because of the imagery (if you look closely the green skirt becomes a tie and you can see a man's face above it...)
Mike's favorite was
Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man because of the symbolism...
Maddy's favorite was Sentimental Colloquy because "it was so creative"...
We spent about 2 and a half hours looking around (the audio tour is a must) before Maddy announced that she "enjoyed it but there comes a point when I'm just done." Well worth the $20 for adults and $10 for kids I'd say; there is some sexual imagery however, which you may want to bear in mind if you're taking children - depending on how you feel about those kinds of things. It didn't bother us, but eleven-year old Maddy was a bit embarassed at some of it and said later that she "turned around - it was disgusting":). We had a lovely visit - if you go, we'd love to hear what you thought!
