(Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, FL)Janet Ramin - Slithering across the humid, subtropical landscape like the pocket watches in Persistence of Memory, the Dali Museum recently opened its new building in St. Petersburg, Florida. The surreal architecture boasts of a glass geodesic structure flowing freely in and out of a box building. Architect Yann Weymouth of HOK Architects who conceived the design was inspired by the organic dreamlike paintings of Salvador Dali. 

(Salvador Dali)Dali was born in Catalonia, Spain in 1904, studied at the Academy in Madrid, and eventually moved to Paris where he met Picasso and artists of the surrealist art movement. Influenced by these artists, Dali began to move away from his more rigid art training and develop his own expressive technique. In the 1920s, surrealism was a cultural movement affecting art, poetry, literature, film, and philosophy that dealt with what was beneath the façade of man, the unconscious and dreams. In his most famous work,