The Salvador Dalí Museum opened in St. Petersburg, Florida, after Reynolds and Eleanor Morse moved their large Dalí collection from Ohio to a rehabilitated marine warehouse on the city waterfront. The Morses had begun collecting Dalí after seeing a Cleveland Museum of Art retrospective in 1942 and built a decades-long relationship with the artist. The St. Petersburg opening gave the collection a permanent public home and helped establish a major American center for Surrealism outside the traditional museum capitals. The museum later moved to a purpose-built waterfront building in 2011, but the March 7, 1982 opening is the institutional turning point that brought the Morse collection to Florida.
It made St. Petersburg a major public destination for Dalí and Surrealist art.
