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A reinvigorated museum in MONTEREY pays tribute to one of its OWN, Salvador Dalí, with a WORLD-CLASS collection The Monterey Peninsula’s craggy, cypress tree-studded coast has long lured artistic types—author John Steinbeck, photographer Ansel Adams, Beat icon Jack Kerouac—to its shores, shrouded in fog and dappled light. One major artist is often lost amid this litany, relegated to a mere colorful footnote. But real estate investor and Pebble Beach resident Dmitry Piterman has righted that slight with the recent unveiling of Dali17, a reborn museum dedicated to Salvador Dalí, an early member of the Carmel Art Association. “I stumbled on Dalí in college at a Ghirardelli Square gallery,” recalls Piterman, a Ukrainian native who immigrated to Brooklyn with his family at the age of 15, attended UC Berkeley on a track scholarship and traveled to Spain to compete in the 1992 U.S. Olympic trials. That Barcelona locale burnished Piterman’s passion for Dalí, whose birthplace, Figueres, is nearby. “I became a bit obsessed with Dalí’s original thinking
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and flamboyance, and began buying his work at auctions.” The Spanish surrealist’s route to the West Coast commenced in 1940 when he and his wife and muse, Gala, fled Nazioccupied Europe, decamping from France to New York. They were lured to Hollywood to create the dream sequence for The Chalice of Love, 1976.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound and found their way to Monterey, where they lived off and on, from 1941 to 1949. Dali17 is located near Fisherman’s Wharf at the Museum of Monterey. It’s a joint venture between the Monterey History and Art Association and Piterman, resulting in a permanent exhibition space for Piterman’s 500-plus-piece oeuvre (previously only exhibited in Spain and Belgium), which is the nation’s largest private Dalí collection and comprises rare art, including original etchings, sculptures, lithographs and mixed media. This month marks the 75th anniversary of Dalí’s famous dinner party, “A Surrealistic Night in an Enchanted Forest,” staged at the Hotel Del Monte resort. That 1941 fete included animals from the San Francisco Zoo and attracted the likes of Bob Hope, Clark Gable and then17-year-old heiress Gloria Vanderbilt—a photo of Vanderbilt and Dalí from that very night is now hanging in the museum. Piterman can’t help but daydream about staging a gala in commemoration, possibly later this year—and maybe even with Vanderbilt in attendance. “We hope she might make it,” he says. 5 Custom House Plz., Monterey, 831-372-2608; dali17.com. • CATHERINE BIGELOW
ARTWORK AND MUSEUM EXTERIOR (4): SCOTT CAMPBELL. DALI PORTRAIT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, NYWT&S COLLECTION, LC-USZ62-114985
Clockwise from far left: The artist’s Mystery of Sleep, 1976. SALVADOR DALÍ with ocelot friend at St. Regis, 1965. In the Beginning God Created Heaven and Earth, 1969. The DALI17 museum.