Begun in 2015, this immersive exhibition series led by Carol Ockman, Ph.D., curator-at-large for Selby Gardens, examines master artists and their relationships to nature in the context of a botanical garden. Seeing master works of art—often on loan from major art institutions around the world—in a garden setting awakens new comparisons in viewers’ minds. The 2020 exhibition in the series, Salvador Dalí: Gardens of the Mind, transformed the Downtown Sarasota campus into a surrealist wonderland.
Salvador Dali: Gardens of the Mind
February 9 to July 26, 2020, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The fourth annual exhibition in the Jean & Alfred Goldstein Exhibition Series, Salvador Dalí: Gardens of the Mind. In collaboration with The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, the exhibit will open February 9, 2020 and conclude on July 26, 2020. The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla. is home to an unparalleled collection of Salvador Dalí’s works. Salvador DalÍ: Gardens of the Mind includes ten colorful photolithographs of flowers by Dalí along with works from American photographer Clyde Butcher’s series Visions of Dalí’s Spain. These artworks and the Dalí-themed plant displays inspired by them transforms Selby Gardens’ into an evocation of Dalí’s vision.
Digital Lecture
Dali’s Environment: A Geological Delirium, with Peter Tush, Curator of Education at the Dali Museum
The Dalí exhibition highlights the artist’s repeated use of botanical imagery alongside a surreal display of tropical plants in Selby Gardens’ Tropical Conservatory and gardens. The lithographic series FlorDalí, on loan from The Dalí Museum, is the centerpiece of the Museum of Botany & the Arts, along with artifacts and photos that put the artist’s life, work, and relationship with nature into context.