Dali centennial celebrations - Front Page - exhibitions to celebrate anniversary of artist Salvador Dali's birth

"Dali 2004," an extensive series of events, mostly in Spain, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Salvador Dali's birth, got off to an early start. Last October, King Juan Carlos launched the centennial with a tribute to Dali at the Teatre-Museu Dell in Figueres, an appropriately quirky institution of the artist's own making that contains his final resting place.

The Dali 2004 program includes 16 exhibitions, some of which travel to venues in Europe and the U.S., and one that originates In Venice. Also on the slate are such activities as a presentation in Peralada, Catalonia, of Richard Strauss's opera Salome, with Deli-designed stage sets and costumes from 1949 [go to www.dali2004.org for details].

"Dali: Mass Culture" is a major exhibition featuring some 400 objects chosen to demonstrate Dali's embrace of pop culture in all its variants: film, design, fashion, advertising, photography and the mass media. Produced by the Gala-Salvador Dali and La Caixa foundations and curated by art and film historian Felix Fanes, it opens at Barcelona's CaixaForum on Jan. 27 [through May 23]. The show will travel to the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid [June 22-Aug. 30], the Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Fla. loot. 10, 2004-Jan. 12, 2005], and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam [Feb, 15-Apr. 15, 2005].

Later in the year, the largest Dali retrospective ever mounted will open at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice [Sept. 5, 2004-Jan. 9, 2005]. Curated by Dab' expert end University of Essex professor Dawn Ades, the exhibition will focus on his various interests (such as science, optics, mythology and the fourth dimension), his work's impact on postwar art, his writings and poetry, and his relationships with other creators, including Marcel Duchamp, poet Federico Garcia Lorca and architect Antoni Gaudi. Featuring 150 oil paintings, the show makes its only U.S. appearance at the Philadelphia Museum of Art [Feb. 6-May 15, 2005].

In so-called "Dalilandia," the artist's native coastal region north of Barcelona, the Teatre-Museu Dali will showcase recent acquisitions of early oil paintings, as well as a collection of ornate jewels designed by the artist. On view not far away in the tiny village of Port Lligat is Dali's pristinely restored home, a zigzagging, whitewashed structure comprising numerous tiny fishermen's houses Dali acquired over time. Also nearby, in Pubol, is the Casa-Museu Castell Gala-Daft, the elaborately appointed castle he bought and decorated for his wife and beloved muse, Gala.

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