Shortly before marrying in 1942, A. Reynolds Morse & Eleanor R. Morse attended a Dalí retrospective at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Intrigued by the artist’s subject matter, and impressed by his draftsmanship, they bought their first painting a year later. The purchase began a 40-year relationship as patrons and friends of Dalí that resulted in a comprehensive collection of original Dalí work.

Until 1971, the Morses displayed their collection in their Cleveland, Ohio, home. When they loaned over 200 pieces to a Dalí retrospective in 1965, they realized that 25 years of collecting produced a mini-retrospective that needed a permanent home.

In 1971, with Dalí presiding over the opening, the Morses opened a museum adjacent to their office building in Beachwood, Ohio. By the end of the decade with an overwhelming number of visitors, the Morses decided to again move their collection.

After a search that drew national attention, a marine warehouse in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida was rehabilitated and the museum opened on March 10, 1982.

The museum's collection includes 96 oil paintings, over 100 watercolors and drawings, 1,300 graphics, photographs, sculptures and objects d'art, and an extensive archival library, and displays are periodically rotated.

The museum is home to 7 of the 18 masterwork paintings by Dalí (including The Hallucinogenic Toreador and The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus), the most of any museum in the world. To be considered a masterwork these paintings must be at least 5 feet in any direction and have been worked on for over a year.

In addition to displaying the work of Dalí, the museum aims to educate the public and promote understanding, enjoyment and scholarly examination of art through the exhibition of works by Dalí and artists of similar vision.

With the Dalí Theater-Museum created by Dalí himself in his home town of Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, St. Petersburg's Dalí museum has one of the world's largest collections of Dalí's works.

 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Dalí Theater-Museum) Jump to: navigation, search Main courtyard.The Dalí Theatre and Museum (Teatre-Museu Dalí in Catalan language), is a museum of the artist Salvador Dalí in his home town of Figueres, in Catalonia. The heart of the museum was the building that housed the town's theatre when Dalí was a child, and where one of the first public exhibitions of young Dalí's art was shown. The old theater was bombed in the Spanish Civil War and remained in a state of ruin for decades until Dalí and the mayor of Figueres decided to rebuild it as a museum dedicated to the town's most famous son in 1960. The museum also occupies buildings and courtyards adjacent to the old theater building. Museum entranceThe museum opened in 1974, with continuing expansions through the mid-1980s. It houses the single largest and most diverse collection of works by Salvador Dalí, the heart of which was from the artist's own collection. In addition to Dalí paintings from all decades of his career, there are Dalí sculptures, 3-dimensional collages, mechanical devices, a living-room with custom furniture that looks like the face of Mae West when viewed from a certain spot, and other curiosities from Dalí's imagination. The museum also houses a small selection of works by other artists collected by Dalí, ranging from El Greco to Marcel Duchamp, and a gallery devoted to the work of Dalí's friend and fellow Catalan artist Antoni Pitxot, who became director of the museum after Dalí's death. Dalí is buried in a crypt in the Teatre-Museum basement.