If you are concerned about the numerous fake Salvador Dali signatures floating around, here’s another one to consider: located at the top of the Yann Weymouth designed, (HOK, http://www.hok.com/) the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, this one is etched in reinforced concrete. Distinguishing the planar façade of the building – what amounts to a hurricane proof bunker – the signature asserts individuality. Another human touch emanates from the building entrance where a living wall of plants and the fountain of youth, courtesy of Dali, greet you. Is this new iteration more vital than The Dali Museum’s former location? fine arts magazine

Slung around the harbor and plaza side of the structure is a bulging swath of glass that cuts across the concrete mantel like a 3-D sash that terminates in geodesic knots, a nod to Teatro-Museo Dali in Figueres, Spain. Inside, this is the place to meet, a gathering spot for the photo op, perhaps the podium, or the bar, depending on the occasion. This cool windshield-like fixture admits as much light as it permits the gaze of the crowds to float outward onto the harbor, the airfield next door and the Verde Gris of Tampa Bay – a compelling vista.

Welcome to interior museum planning as of 1.11.11, when the Dali Museum opened: 68,000 square feet divided into public space, offices and last but not least, galleries. The Dali brand gift shop, where one arrives, is a surrealist chotztke paradise. Save for a greeter to point the way, one could wander there endlessly, perhaps taking a Catalonian bean soup and alighting in the adjacent open café for a glass of Rioja. If you remember why you came here, you may now buy your admission ticket.

With deference to Frank Lloyd Wright, you start at the top floor, awash in natural light. Ascending via elevator or a single helix stairwell – tight, when up and down visitors employ it simultaneously – one enters gallery spaces that may be cavernous or confined or both. The installation sweetly begins with the narrative of mega-benefactors A. Reynolds and Eleanor Morse, who befriended Dali, and their first acquisition Daddy Longlegs of the Evening – Hope! Arranged chronologically, the early impressionist still life work, nudes, (particularly Femme Couche, 1928), as well as landscapes notable for their oyster white light, are installed in close quarters that suggest nothing more than a high ceilinged storage area.

In 1925, Dali read Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams which catapulted his imagination, style and subject matter in new directions. At this point, the gallery space likewise opens up. Un Chien Andalou, 1929, an absurdist film made with Luis Bunuel is projected large-scale onto one wall of a vast rectangular space. So enjoyable is the phenomenon of viewing video in situ, that one never wants to enter a small darkened place segmented behind a curtain again. Sculptural objects co-mingle, like Venus de Milo with Drawers, 1936, (having white fur knobs), extending the cathartic relief of Surrealist humor to previously unrealized dimensions.

Augured by the seminal Nature Morte Vivante (Still Life – Fast Moving), 1956 the next paintings gallery heralds several key works, including the oft reproduced Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln – Homage to Rothko (Second Version), 1976 – which is also the collection catalogue cover, (by Robert Lubar); and the image adorning, for example, a hotel corridor at the Hilton in Pinellas Park, Florida.

The hauntingly powerful works, Old Age Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages), 1940, through The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, 1 952-54 – here the iconic melting watches; and The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, 1958-59 articulate Dali’s breadth of artistic concerns. But although there is breadth, there is not necessarily breathing. This installation does not permit the depth of perspective, the arc one of the peripheral walk, or the generosity of space that allowed one to absorb, much less luxuriate in, each work in the previous building. That generosity might now be called wasted space. Or perhaps, interest in this collection is simply greater than expected, and so one jostles for space.

The installation’s last progression – there are a total of over 2,100 phantasmagorical Dali holdings, so exhibitions revolve – is the “Nuclear Mysticism” period, the artist’s response to a perceived lack of spiritualism in Abstract Expressionism. (He felt a computer could generate a Mondrian or Pollock.) Monumental canvases like The Hallucinogenic Toreador, 1969-1970, which seems to hale Jim Dine’s Venuses, document the classicism, supernatural aura and transcendental concerns of Salvador Dali. What painter working today is consumed with reconciling the metaphysical with the political, scientific and the psychological?

Having broken early on from Andre Breton, Dali’s sweeping, alchemic worldview ultimately became self-referential, and simultaneously validated. When the artist consolidated his works in the Teatro-Museo Dali in 1974, diametrically opposed events unfolded: his beloved wife and muse Gala died; King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia became honorary patrons of The Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali; and Dali was honored with the Grand Cross of the Order of Charles III, the State’s highest award, all in 1982 – the same year the Salvador Dai Museum first opened in St. Petersburg Florida.

Beyond the kitsch, the caricature and the reputed 400 blank pieces of paper Dali signed – or because of it – this prolific artist’s oeuvre is accessible. Diverse mediums such as holograms, jewelry, film, sculpture, painting and works on paper, represents exactly what the artist sought—an amalgam, a holistic view and a way of seeing things. Take a look at the influence in fashion, personified by the apparition Daphne Guinness. Such creative whimsy filled the crowds on opening day at The Dali Museum, when a Dali impersonator and a Salsa band sizzled on the outdoor plaza with rhythm and beat beneath this latest signature piece. The ingrained dance steps of well-dressed patrons patterned the sunlight and suggested that it’s this composite that will likely succeed – and outstrip its predecessor – not solely as a museum with a great biographical collection, but as a fascinating cultural destination. Does the building become as iconic as the artist?

The artist and building converge into a seamless whole, a Dali universe. 40,000 visitors have toured the museum since it’s opening last month. One Saturday alone recorded 2,300 guests. With over a $1,000,000 in revenue since 1.11.11, this Dali Museum generated a quarter of the annual revenue above its previous location. Surrealism is getting real; its imagination and lofty ideals got packaged here with zest and panache, without the pretense, and coalesced into the intuitive experience one craves.

By Diane Dewey, Contributing Writer