Brush to canvas: News from the art community

The Dali Museum is taking the show on the road.

The ribbon was cut Wednesday morning on the museum’s Art Mobile, a collaborative project with the Pinellas County School Board.

Inside is a veritable Dali Lite exhibit, designed for mid-elementary school students, as a way of introducing the surrealist legend’s work, beliefs and methodology to a new audience of appreciators.

Although Pinellas schools have used the “traveling museum” format for decades, said PreK-12 Visual Arts Specialist Jonathan Ogle, the interactive Dali Art Bus marks a turning point for both organizations. This version is something special. “For many, it’s their very first museum experience, without even having to leave their school.”

The Dali educational team, Ogle added, “put a lot of thought and imagination into this enormous project.”

Art Mobile interior. Photo by Bill DeYoung.

When youngsters enter the 40-foot, air-conditioned converted trailer, they’ll first watch a 10-minute film, from St. Petersburg’s Roundhouse Creative, in which three kids explore – in actual kid fashion – just what this Spanish dude with the freaky moustache was all about. It’s an entertaining introduction to the Dali Art Bus experience to come.

Their own teachers will serve as docents when the children are in the art bus.

“There’s no project of this scale that doesn’t come together with a lot of talented people,” stressed Kim Macuare, the Dali’s Director of Education.

The Florida Arts Educators Conference takes place in St. Petersburg this week, she explained. “With this ongoing relationship with Pinellas County Schools, we actually have a commitment to not only serving 30,000 Pinellas County students, but we’re hoping that teachers from other counties will see this mobile museum and decide they want to bring it to their counties.”

The museum’s next exhibit, Alberto Giacometti & Salvador Dalí: Through & Beyond Surrealism, will debut Nov. 15.

Feb. 10, 2021: Tom Brady throws the Vince Lombardi Trophy to teammates on another boat as they celebrate their Super Bowl title in Tampa. Photo: Kyle Zedaker/Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

In Tampa

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers arrived in 1975, and the Tampa Museum of Art is honoring the NFL team’s semicentennial with The Bucs at Fifty: A Photographic Retrospective, on view through Oct. 26. The Bucs’ evolution is traced through images of “historic players and coaches, iconic moments from the field and rarely seen behind-the-scenes photographs.”

The museum’s also exhibiting Charles Atlas: Kiss the Day Goodbye, a 2015 video installation by pioneering artist Charles Atlas. It depicts 36 Gulf of Mexico sunsets, all at once, over a 19-minute period.

Tampa Museum of Art website.

A Baroque master

Carrravagio, “Boy Bitten By a Lizard” (est. 1594-1596).

Coming to the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg Oct. 25 is In Caravaggio’s Light: Baroque Masterpieces from the Fondazione Roberto Longhi. This exhibit includes 40 works from a private collection, including an acknowledged masterwork (Boy Bitten By a Lizard) from Caravaggio, the highly influential late-16^th century Italian Baroque painter. Works by the Caravaggisti – his stylistic followers (including Valentin de Boulogne, Jusepe de Ribera, Carlo Saraceni and Matthias Stomer) – comprise the remainder of the exhibit. “Caravaggio changed painting forever, and his influence echoes through the centuries,” Stanton Thomas, the MFA’s chief curator, said in a prepared statement.

Also opening Oct. 25: Baroque Continuum/Caravaggio and the Caravaggisti Over Time, picking up the master’s influence – his “profound visual language” – and the way in which it has inspired artists for centuries. Viewers will see the Baroque effect in the works of painter Thomas Anshutz, photographer Edward Steichen and sculptor Reza Aramesh, among others.

And still more

Frames of Legacy: The Artifacts Behind Animation & Storytelling is at the Imagine Museum Friday through Sunday. In celebration of the 102nd anniversary of the Walt Disney Company and the 75th anniversary of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, the event displays artifacts, archival documents and original film props from the Orlando Museum Walt’s Secret Closet. There will be activities for children. Imagine Museum website.

On view through Nov. 11 at the FloridaRAMA Gallery, Windows Letting in Light, Prayers for Lawrence is a collection of paintings and mixed media by Genevieve Lykes Dimmitt. Her work for this show was created following the 2017 death of her son, Lawrence Hundley Dimmitt IV, by suicide. The works are explorations of grief and healing. “My art practice has always been a way for me to process my feelings, but it is also a way to spark conversations that can save lives,” she said.

The artist will speak Nov. 8 (6-8 p.m.), along with a representative from her family’s nonprofit, Love IV Lawrence. The nonprofit’s members “work to change the conversation around mental health by de-stigmatizing depression and suicide.”

Works by Genevieve Lykes Dimmit are on exhibit at FloridaRAMA Gallery.

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