August 2: Dali Museum, the Vinoy, and "Sex with Strangers"

Dear Friends and Relatives,

Although there was a lot of rain today, Nancy and I made our way to the Dali Museum, arriving at 10:00 am for Coffee with the Curator and a 10:30 lecture by Father Robert Keffer.  The talk was entitled "Go to the Desert; Go to the Devil: The Temptation of St. Anthony and the Desert Experience in the Art of Salvador Dali."  Keffer discussed the desert experience of conversion, and used three paintings by Salvador Dali as reference.  He explored the connection between the classical definition of spiritual temptation as found in the writings of the Church fathers, and their relevance to the Freudian visual self-analysis found in Dali's early surrealist works.  Keffer compared the conversion experience to Dali's development as an artist in the painting "The Temptation of St. Anthony," later expressed in the classical mystical work, "The Ascension."  Fascinating lecture!

After that I took several pictures of the Dali Museum building and Nancy and I explored the interesting gift shop before viewing the collection, the largest of Dali's works outside Europe.  Shortly before marrying in 1942, Reynolds and Eleanor Morse attended a Dali retrospective at the Cleveland Museum of Art.  A year later they bought their first painting by Dali, which initiated a 40-year relationship as friends and patrons.  Until 1971, they displayed their collection in their home in Cleveland.  They loaned out 200 pieces for a Dali retrospective in 1965, and realized they needed a permanent home for their collection.  In 1971 they housed their collection in an office building in Beachwood, Ohio, but by the end of the decade, due to the overwhelming number of visitors, they decided to move the collection again.  After a drawn-out search, a marine warehouse in downtown St. Petersburg was rehabilitated, and the museum was opened in 1982.  In mid-2008, a new location was announced, and the new facility was opened in 2011.  The structure features a large glass entryway and skylight.  The glass entryway is 75 ft. high and encompasses a spiral staircase.  Walls are composed of 18-inch thick concrete, designed to protect the collection from hurricanes.

The collection encompasses 96 oil paintings, over 100 watercolors and drawings, 1300 graphics, photographs, sculptures, objets d'art, and an extensive archival library.  The museum is home to two iconic paintings of Dali: "The Hallucinogenic Toreador" and "The Discovery of America by Columbus."  

After a three-hour visit, Nancy and I decided to have lunch elsewhere, and down the road was a historic hotel, the Vinoy, so we picked that.  The Vinoy was built in 1925 and took 10 months to complete.  It was a seasonal hotel open from December to March, and cost $20 a night, the highest in the area at the time.  Babe Ruth, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, James Stewart and Al Capone stayed here.  During WW II, the hotel was taken over by the US Army and used as a training school.  After the war, it continued to prosper for a few decades, then fell out of favor and into decline and disrepair by the end of the 60s.  In 1974, the Vinoy closed and most of its contents were sold at auction.  It sat vacant until the early 1990s, when it was bought by a partnership between Renaissance Hotels and Resorts and the Vinoy Development Corporation.  A $93 million renovation was undertaken, and after two years it was reopened.  

Nancy and I explored the lobby and I took pictures, after which we ate at one of their restaurants, where we shared coconut shrimp (almost as good as the ones I had at the Palm Pavilion a few days ago) and excellent fish tacos and a salad. 

From there we drove back home and took a small nap before having leftover roast and vegetables, plus watermelon for dessert.  Then all three of us got dressed up and left for the American Stage Theatre in downtown SP to see the play "Sex with Strangers" by Laura Eason.  This is one of the country's most produced new plays and is a smart and timely comedy about intimacy in the digital age.  A raging snowstorm traps strangers Olivia, an unsuccessful yet gifted 49-year-old writer, and Ethan, a tech-addicted and wildly successful young blogger, in a secluded cabin.  Opposites instantly attract and sex is imminent, but will technology bring them closer together or make them virtual strangers?  The actors, Carey Urban and Ben Williamson, were superb, and we were even able to catch the prelude talk preceding the presentation of the play.  

On the way home, we stopped by a grocery store, and Jim bought vanilla ice cream and root beer, for us to make root beer floats at home--a great treat to end the day!!  Yum!  Nancy is working on a special treat for tomorrow morning, and I am about to go to bed.  Great day!  Until tomorrow, Sylvia