Place to see: Salvador Dali Museum, Clearwater, Florida, United States

About this place:

The Salvador Dali Museum in St Petersburg sits in a beautiful spot right on the water. This building houses the world’s most comprehensive collection of his art, with 96 oils, 100 watercolors and drawings, and 1,300 graphics, photographs, sculptures and objects d'art. It covers all of Dali’s major themes, impressionist and cubist from his early work, and plenty of his surrealist art, for which he is probably best known.
One of the paintings in the gallery from his classic period is, “Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters becomes a Portrait of Abraham Lincoln”. At first glance it is a painting of a nude woman looking out through a window to sea, but on moving away from it, about 66 feet, and squinting it becomes a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. He painted this in 1976 after reading an article in Scientific American by Leon D Harmon, regarding the minimal quantity of information needed to recognise a face. By squinting it reduces the depth of field and the well known face of the president is seen.
A short film with interviews of Dali and his wife Gala gives insight into this amazing man who produced such diverse art, and even designed clothing for Coco Chanel amongst other things.
Dali was a master of double meanings and symbolism. He believed that inner life and ambiguity was in all. One example of this is the many insects and other symbols in his paintings. To him daddy longlegs represented hope; gadflies meant invasion and cypress trees were death. He also used grasshoppers to mean terror, and ants to portray decay.
It doesn’t cost any extra to join a tour and listen to a docent giving some history of the museum and pointing out many interesting bits and pieces about the paintings that may otherwise be missed. A maximum of about 3 hours is needed to see everything properly.
Free parking right outside the museum makes it a great place to visit during the hot summer months and after the tour it is just a short walk to downtown St Petersburg where there is a nice choice of cafes and restaurants.
http://www.salvadordalimuseum.org/home.html