Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Salvador Dali Exhibition
September 12, 2004 | Bige OZLER
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts will celebrate its 200th birthday in January with a major exhibition and the opening of a new building, but a bigger art noise this season more likely will be generated by Salvador Dalí.
To mark the centennial of the Spanish surrealist's birth in 1904, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Palazzo Grassi in Venice have put together a comprehensive show of his often startling and sometimes bizarre paintings.
It opens today in Venice and at the Art Museum on Feb. 16. No other exhibition in or near the city between now and next summer promises to generate comparable excitement.
Dalí, the most famous surrealist painter, was one of the few 20th-century artists known to the public beyond the art world, not only for images such as melted watches, but for ingeniously outrageous behavior.
The retrospective tries to demonstrate that he was an important modernist as well as a persistent exhibitionist and an indefatigable publicity hound.
Before Dalí arrives, however, the Pennsylvania Academy will have its turn in the spotlight. The country's oldest art school and museum, founded in 1805, will open two floors of galleries in its new Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building at Broad and Cherry Streets.
The 11-story building, which houses classrooms, studios and offices for art students, allo
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