Growing Up with Dali

The story starts in 1943, when, as a wedding gift to themselves, Morse’s parents, Reynolds and Eleanor Morse, paid $1,250 for their first Dali, Daddy Longlegs of the Evening–Hope! and $1,700 for the frame, chosen by Dali himself. The 16-inch-by-20-inch oil on canvas includes seemingly-molten male and female figures, a horse being shot from a cannon, the Winged Victory (Nike of Samothrace), and, like most Dali paintings, other symbolic figures. Eleanor Morse’s parents thought the young couple was crazy to pay $2,950 for a Dali painting.

With the success of Injection Molders Supply Company (IMS), the business that Reynolds Morse had founded, the couple grew their collection and eventually developed a close friendship with Dali and his wife, Gala. The couple had “first pick” of Dali’s New York gallery shows and only bought works they loved.

Brad Morse recalls his parents once attending an event in New York, leaving him to enjoy dinner with Dali and his entourage at a nearby restaurant. Morse says he found Dali to be an engaging dinner companion who loved being the center of attention—not the Dali often regarded as the “P.T. Barnum of painting” for his flamboyant self-promotion around the world.

“What I love about Dali is the intellectual side of Dali,” Morse says, pointing to the artist’s embrace of mathematics and science in his works.

When the Morses’ Dali collection outgrew their house, they established the Salvador Dali Museum in a wing of the IMS plant, in Beachwood, Ohio, in 1971. The paintings were carefully moved from the house to the IMS wing about a mile to the west. A special high ceiling was created during construction to house the first tall masterwork.

By the mid-1970s, the collection again needed more space. The Morses, concerned that estate taxes would likely force them to break up their collection, began looking for a permanent home to keep their collection together. The Florida legislature provided financing to renovate a marine equipment warehouse in St. Petersburg to display the collection and upgrade the city’s image. The plain, thick-walled museum attracted 57,000 visitors in 1982, and by 1999, 225,000 visitors.

In 2011, a new, $36 million museum opened that doubled the exhibition space and improved hurricane protection. Dali’s friendship with futurist Buckminster Fuller inspired the architecture. When Brad Morse had initially told his mother that planning was underway for the new building, he says she told him, “Very well, but it must have a geodesic dome.”

Architect Yann Weymouth’s design wraps a huge geodesic glass bubble around a cube structure that showcases a kaleidoscopic view of St. Petersburg. Dali’s infatuation with mathematics and science also is acknowledged in the museum’s helical staircase resembling a DNA strand and an outside Mathematical Garden. The museum earned Michelin Guide recognition as the top-rated museum in the American South.

“My parents spent almost 40 years collecting the works of Dali,” Morse says. “The primary requirement for donating the collection was to not sell Dali’s art to buy something else [deaccession] but to preserve their collection. I have maintained that goal throughout my tenure on the [museum’s] executive committee. Fortunately, all the board members understand that the paintings are the foundation which brings the attendance, and with it, the funds for operating the museum, so deaccessioning has never been an issue.”

The museum is eyeing an expansion.

Story by Karen Walton