Inside The Dalí Museum’s planned $65 million expansion in downtown St. Pete
/$65 million expansion of the Dali Museum in downtown St. Pete | Beck Architecture and PBK with Yann Weymouth FAIA
A new exhibit at The Dalí Museum is giving visitors a preview of the museum’s planned $65 million expansion in downtown St. Pete.
Now on display is a 3D model and video tour of the proposed addition, which would bring approximately 35,000 square feet of flexible gallery space designed for immersive exhibitions that blend art and technology.
Construction is expected to begin this fall on the south side of the museum between the existing building and Dali Boulevard, with the expansion anticipated to open in September 2028.
Funding for the expansion will come from a combination of private donations, corporate sponsorships, grants, and a portion of Pinellas County tourist development tax revenue, also known as hotel bed taxes.
Once completed, several existing spaces inside the museum will be reconfigured.
The current gift shop will become an orientation area featuring a larger ticket counter and a customer service desk.
The gift shop will relocate to the current Raymond James Community Room on the first floor.
Visitors ascending the museum’s iconic helical staircase to the third floor will be able to walk through the existing galleries into the expansion’s Great Hall, a large flexible venue designed to function as a digital exhibition space during the day and an event venue accommodating up to 400 people at night.
The new addition will also include an outdoor terrace overlooking the downtown waterfront.
On the first floor beneath the Great Hall, plans call for a Learning Pavilion that can host educational programming for up to 90 K-12 students or be converted into a smaller event space for lectures and other programming.
3D model of The Dalí Museum’s planned expansion on display in “The Architecture of The Dalí” exhibit | St. Pete Rising
“As you move around the building, there will be moments where the building starts to dissolve and then starts to reveal itself again, giving you moments of foreshadowing, different perspectives,” Trevor Lamphier of The Beck Group said during a Thursday media preview event.
The Beck Group, which built the museum’s existing structure, is designing the expansion in consultation with Yann Weymouth, architect of the current museum building.
“This is a hard act to follow — this is a very iconic, amazing building,” Lamphier said. “Figuring out the right tone to set with the expansion is really something we spent a lot of time thinking about. We wanted the expansion to be a complement, not a clone.”
Lamphier said the design team is using many of the same materials found on the existing museum, but in different ways.
“With the facade we tried to build on that complementary nature and are using the same materials of the existing building, but rendered with heavy texture,” he added.
The 3D model and video tour are part of The Architecture of The Dalí exhibit, which debuted May 2nd and explores the museum’s history, evolution, and future vision.
A second exhibit, Dalí in America, opens Saturday and examines how American culture helped shape Salvador Dalí into a global icon.
“They both involve a sense of transformation of how our building has transformed with the story we are telling, and how America was transformed by Dalí,” Museum Executive Director Hank Hine said during the press conference.
“What we hope people will take away is a sense of how a building can become a mechanism of art, and that evolves over time,” Hine added. “We want it to be a place for people to get new ideas and preserve that sense of social space, which is increasingly missing in our society.”
The new expansion will be built on south side between the existing building and Dali Boulevard | The Dali Museum
Today, the museum houses more than 2,400 works by Dalí, making it the largest collection of the artist’s work outside of Spain.
In recent years, the museum has expanded its focus on immersive technology through additions like the Dalí Dome, a 360-degree projection experience, and AI-powered exhibits featuring a life-like digital representation of the artist.
“We are the first museum to create a virtual reality exhibition and the first to use artificial intelligence,” Hine said. “I think we are going to be a pioneer, a new hybrid for museums to be experimental laboratories.”
More information about the museum, current exhibits, and the planned expansion is available at The Dalí expansion website.
Eleanor and A. Reynolds Morse in front of first St. Petersburg museum, 1982 | The Dalí Museum
