St Petersburg, Florida is quickly becoming a serious arts destination. The new Salvador Dali Museum is posed to open in January, 2011 and now the Chihuly Collection, a magnificent 10,000 square foot museum designed by award-winning architect Albert Alfonso, has just opened. The Collection is located on the city’s waterfront in downtown St. Petersburg on Beach Drive, within walking distance of the Museum of Fine Arts, a multitude of galleries, restaurants and shops and the new Dali Museum.
This presentation is unique as it is the first installation of Chihuly art in a building designed specifically for that purpose. It is designed so that the art and architecture work together to create a visitor experience unlike any other exhibition of Chihuly’s art. The Collection is marked at the entrance by an iconic 20 foot sculpture created especially for the site.
Chihuly has been exhibiting in Florida for years. I visited both of his large-scale outdoor exhibitions at Fairchild Gardens in Miami. Chihuly's organic shapes and colors were a perfect fit with the natural gardens. Christine and I went back time and time again, at different hours of the day, to watch how the light changed the work and to watch the relationship change between the work and the surrounding gardens.
Very few artists make such an impact on their medium that they change it forever. From how a piece is created to how we view the work, they change the process and leave their stamp forever on the art world. Both Dali and Chihuly are such artists and now St. Petersburg, Florida has them both! GL
Chihuly Collection in St. Petersburg, Florida
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