‘Catalyst Sessions’ recap: Hank Hine

Dr. Hank Hine, executive director of St. Petersburg’s Dali Museum, said Monday on The Catalyst Sessions that attendance, since the museum re-opened with limited hours July 1, has been about what he expected, “less than half of a normal time period.”

“People are very agreeable about the masks,” Hine added. “They understand that it’s to protect themselves, to protect others. And we’ve got a staff that we care very much about, and we all want to stay safe too.”

And there’s a  new pedestrian route to take, between galleries. “It’s kind of a single course, a unicursal route through the museum,” he said. “So you start at one place – pick the time you like – but you end up in another place so you’re not criss-crossing and getting too close to people.”

The wide-ranging discussion turned to the Dali’s relationships with other major art museums around the world – as the largest single collection of Dali art in America, it frequently loans pieces and borrows in kind for its temporary exhibits – and the marketing and promotion of St. Petersburg as an art destination with nine major museums.

Hine also discussed the Dali’s proposed 20,000-square-foot expansion, to house digital and virtual art experiences – the way of the future for art institutions, he insists. “We’re working with VR and Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, all the things that are at the frontier to make art experiences palpable,” he said.

Today on The Catalyst Sessions: Writer Craig Pittman.

Streaming weekdays at 7 p.m. on the Catalyst Facebook page. All episodes are archived on our YouTube page.