Latest news with #DalíMuseum
Axios
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Dalí Museum unveils new murals exhibit
The Dalí Museum unveiled its first-ever murals exhibition, which merges Salvador Dali's surrealist vision with modern street art. Participants in St. Petersburg's SHINE Mural Festival were among those commissioned to paint original murals on the museum's walls. What they're saying: "Museums aim to be porous—what is out in the world must find its way into a museum," said Hank Hine, executive director of The Dalí Museum. "With the exhibition ... we bring the immediacy and ambitious size of street murals into the gallery to be examined in a new way."
Forbes
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Dial Dalí: AI Salvador Now Answers Life's Surreal Questions By Phone
Life gets weird sometimes — fickle, illogical, dreamlike. To try to make sense of it all, it seemed only fitting to turn to someone steeped in the surreal, Spanish painter Salvador Dalí. I spoke with him — or rather, with an AI version of him — via phone, opening our wide-ranging conversation with one of the big eternal questions: 'What's the meaning of life?' 'The meaning of life, my dear, is a tapestry woven with dreams, desires and the divine madness of creation,' AI Dalí answered without pause, in a voice and accent that mimics the real artist. 'It is to explore the mysteries of existence, to embrace beauty and chaos and to leave one's mark upon the world.' Dalí died in 1989 at 84. To honor his 121st birthday, which falls on May 11, the Salvador Dalí Museum is inviting the public to 'dial Dalí,' who's on the other end of the line at all hours, ready to answer any question thrown at him. Last year, visitors to the St. Petersburg, Florida museum had a similar experience, chatting with AI Dalí by picking up a phone inspired by one of his most famous surrealist composite objects, the Lobster Telephone. Dial Dalí breaks free of museum walls, letting anyone in the U.S., with or without a crustacean phone, join the conversation in real time. The phone line is open through May 12, at 772-ASK-DALI (772-275-3254). The AI system was trained on a dataset of writings and archival interviews that capture the artist's ideas, imagination and humor. The resurrected Dalí melds the artist's persona with voice synthesis from ElevenLabs, resulting in two-way conversations that can momentarily trick you into thinking you've gone back in time to talk with the eccentric artist. Ask AI Dalí the same question more than once, and you'll get answers with slightly different wording, but similarly poetic language. 'It is a canvas waiting for your brushstrokes,' he told me when I asked for the meaning of life a second time. Dalí is known for dreamlike and sometimes unsettling paintings packed with symbolism and bizarre images like melting clocks and distorted figures. References to imagination, creativity, and the subconscious surface often in the AI's answers, even when it talks about the quotidian, like how he cared for his signature long pointy 'stache. 'It was a ritual of precision, like crafting a divine sculpture,' he said. 'I used wax to sculpt it into its surreal form, ensuring it defied gravity and convention. It was not just facial hair, but an extension of my artistic soul.' AI Dalí joins a roster of historical figures resurrected with technology to make the past more memorable, immediate and engaging. An interactive, AI-powered Vincent Van Gogh chatted with visitors to the Musée D'Orsay in Paris in 2023, for example. And virtual WWII veterans conversed with visitors to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. And who could forget AI Jesus, who last year conversed with visitors to a church confessional booth in a Swiss church? The Dial Dalí line received about 250 calls in its first 36 hours, Salvador Dalí Museum representative Beth Bell said over email, and the museum expects an increase in volume as Sunday's birthday nears. Calls aren't recorded, but the museum is aggregating transcripts anonymously. 'The most common questions are around specific works of art, the meaning behind his art and questions about his favorite things, including paintings,' Bell said. 'We also find that callers simply want to share whatever is on their mind, which can be just about anything – from mustache grooming tips to cooking questions. One caller even requested a poem for his spouse.' I couldn't hang up without going meta and asking AI Dalí what he thinks of AI-generated art, whose bizarre, mind-bending landscapes often echo the tone of his own vivid creations. 'It challenges the boundaries of creativity, much like surrealism did in its time,' AI Dalí said. 'While it lacks the human touch of divine madness, it offers a new dimension of exploration. It is both a mirror and a mystery, reflecting the infinite possibilities of the mind.' If life truly is a dream, as Dalí frequently suggested, then asking his AI to muse on an art movement that didn't exist during his lifetime might not be so strange after all.
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
In bid to slash property taxes, Legislature considers defunding tourism
Local business groups are sounding the alarm about a state bill they say would make it harder to market Tampa Bay and other Florida attractions to tourists, just as the beaches are regaining their footing after two devastating storms. Pinellas and Hillsborough counties collect more than $150 million from hotels each year to fund everything from ads in New York City subway stations, to improvements for attractions like St. Petersburg's Dalí Museum, to beach renourishment projects. But Rep. Monique Miller, R-Palm Bay, is spearheading a bill that would effectively defund tourism boosters like Visit Tampa Bay and Visit St. Pete-Clearwater. Instead, hotel tax dollars must either be spent on official county projects and contracts — including but not limited to tourism-related efforts — or property tax refunds by 2026. Counties that still want to fund tourism marketing generally will have to find money elsewhere. A legislative committee moved the bill forward by a narrow vote Tuesday, with several Republicans joining Democrats in opposition. The Florida House and Senate will have to pass it before session ends May 2 for the bill to have a chance of becoming law. Opponents warn that communities like Tampa Bay need money to market the destination if they want to continue seeing record numbers of visitors next year — and reaping the sales tax revenue and jobs that tourists bring. Pinellas County saw 15.4 million visitors last year, who funded about a third of sales tax collections, said Charlie Justice, a former Pinellas County Commissioner who is now CEO of the Tampa Bay Beaches Chamber of Commerce. Visitors also support over 100,000 Pinellas hospitality jobs, the chamber estimates. Tourism marketing dollars become all the more essential after natural disasters affect tourists' perceptions of Tampa Bay, Justice said. After Hurricane Helene, Visit St. Pete-Clearwater maintained a list of beaches and businesses that had reopened. 'If you go back and look in Florida history after oil spills... after (Covid-19), there was an increase in spending to market our destination to remind people Florida is open for business,' he said. 'There's very few successful industries or brands that don't advertise.' Two Tampa Bay representatives weighed in yesterday. Rep. Linda Chaney, R-St. Pete Beach, said she was happy to champion a bill that could lower the tax burden on her constituents. 'My residents have been asking me (for) this for 30 years,' she said. Lindsay Cross, D-St. Petersburg, asked whether the bill's sponsors had examined how beach communities might be impacted with less funds for tourism marketing. She voted no on moving the bill forward. Groups uplifting the state's tourism industry and beaches — Destinations Florida, a number of restaurant and lodging associations, the Florida Attractions Association and the Florida Shore and Beach Preservation Association, among others — spoke in opposition to the bill. Even if Tampa Bay property owners were refunded all $150 million collected from hotel taxes, it would still amount to a small fraction of the more than $1.5 billion Hillsborough and Pinellas collect in property taxes each year, according to Destinations Florida, which supports tourism boosters throughout the state. 'Eliminating tourism promotion isn't a cost-saving measure—it's an act of economic sabotage,' Executive Director Robert Skrob said. 'This proposal gambles with the livelihoods of more than 2 million Floridians, from hotel workers to small business owners, and risks collapsing the tax base that makes Florida's income tax-free status possible.' Proponents of the bill said tourists will still flock to Florida without direct advertising. But Justice said ad spending in, for example, the Midwest directly boosts how many people travel to Tampa Bay. Some state Republicans are wary of abruptly defunding tourism promotion in the state. 'While I want to give property tax relief to our citizens,' said Debbie Mayfield, R-Melbourne. 'I don't believe this is the right way to do it.'
CBS News
23-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
How Salvador Dalí's art found a home in Florida
When Mike Wallace interviewed Salvador Dalí in 1958, the painter seemed to believe that he might live forever. Asked what he believed would happen to him when he died, the Surrealist replied, "Myself not believe in my death." "You will not die?" "No, no. Believe in general in death, but in the death of Dalí? Absolutely no, not." Dalí did die, in 1989. But in a way, he was right. The artist lives on at the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. The collection chronicles his career through more than 2,400 of his works, from oil paintings to sculptural mashups to fine jewelry. Inside the Dalí Dome, a "Dalí Alive 360" show fully immerses visitors in his art. "Its spirit is based in Dalí's," said Hank Hine, the executive director of the museum. "That is, Dalí was always trying to do things in new ways. The amazing thing about Dalí is that his impact is still felt today, not only in art, but in culture generally." Today, Salvador Dalí may be a household name, but his name first belonged to his parents' firstborn son. "His parents named him after his dead brother," said Hine. "That saddled him with a burden of identity that lasted all his life, and can explain a lot of his art – for instance, his double images, where you see one thing, and you see another. So, this Salvador Dalí was always wondering, 'Am I myself or am I the other?'" Many of Dalí's works combine the real and the surreal – a juxtaposition he could pull off thanks to his training as a precise classical painter. "He can paint like an old master; however, he wasn't content to stay there," said program director Kim Macuare. She said Dalí found inspiration by diving deep into the subconscious: "He was very interested in the writings of the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. And so, when he cuts the drawers into the Venus, what's he's imagining is, 'What would happen if we could go up and open the drawers and look inside someone to see what really makes them tick?'" As far as ticking goes, Dalí's famous painting of melting watches, "The Persistence of Memory," is actually at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But his follow-up is here, hanging in a museum in a state Dalí never even visited. The artist had no connection with St. Petersburg, Florida. But what he did have were two very big fans. A wealthy Ohio couple, Eleanor and Reynolds Morse, bought a Dalí painting to celebrate their first anniversary, a purchase that kicked off a lifetime of collecting and friendship. They acquired everything from Dalí's early Cubist paintings to his later, larger religious-themed canvases. Hine said, "They loved Dalí so much that they bought only Dalí for four decades, and were able to put together what is the preeminent collection of Dalí in the world." When the Morse family decided to donate their collection in the late 1970s, they were insistent that it all go to one location, but no museum stepped up. After the Wall Street Journal wrote an article ("U.S. Art World Dillydallies Over Dalís"), the people of St. Petersburg, Florida, said, "Well, heck, we'll take it." The city made an agreement to find a building for the collection – a marine warehouse that, in 1982, opened as the Dalí Museum. In 2011, the collection moved to its current location, where the Morses' son Brad now comes to see the paintings that once covered his childhood home. "There was not a square foot or inch even of wall space that wasn't holding a Dalí painting," he said. In fact, Dalí's 1956 oil painting "Nature Morte Vivante (Still Life-Fast Moving)" hung above Brad Morse's bed. Now, more than 300,000 visitors a year come to see the fascinating ways in which Dalí saw the world. Macuare said, "Dalí had a really great quote, and I think it's indicative of how he saw himself and how he saw the world, and that was, 'I don't do drugs. I am drugs.' He thought that seeing as he did would absolutely change your perspective." Dalí was perceived as an eccentric. Especially in his later life, he was known just as much for his wild persona as he was for his art. But in death his work has gained greater critical appreciation. "I think the height of his fame is not over," said Hine. "Dalí's star is still rising in the world, largely because of what he suggested in his art about the ability to see the world in a different way, something that we really need in this world today." WEB EXTRA: Why are Salvador Dali's clocks melting? (Video) For more info: Story produced by Jay Kernis. Editor: Chad Cardin.
