Volunteers=Priceless

These docents explain Dalí’s enigmatic paintings — incorporating explorations of his fantasies through symbolic images such as time irrelevance, or “melting” imagery — his dream world of hidden images that integrates vague and often confusing dramatic tensions.

It is a thrill to be in this stunning new building that houses the largest collection of Dalí’s works outside of Spain. The newness affects all, including docent Susan Lahey. She relates her first tour in the new Dalí Museum structure with a group of middle-school students from Orlando:

It was so much fun to show off our beautiful new facility! We had finished looking at the paintings in the gallery but then I couldn’t find the exit! Finally a helpful guard pointed us in the right direction. The students thoroughly enjoyed standing under the Enigma window on the third floor and looking at the view of Tampa Bay.

Sandra Hall Woodworth is another of these docents. She has been giving time to the Museum for over twenty-five years. Sandra speaks passionately of her work as part of a living history — a legacy that she passes on from person to person.

Buster Chism, volunteer for fourteen years:

I began volunteering for buffets and working in admissions before taking the docent training from curator Joan Kropf.
If you like people with all their oddities, quirks, and differences it’s a great chance to introduce the uninitiated into concepts of surrealism. For the many long-time aficionados of Dalí's art, it’s a chance to perhaps delve a little deeper or venture into a different direction. One quality about Dalí was his chameleon nature — just when you think you have him pigeon-holed, he breaks the rules, jumps into the air, and throws the cat and a bucket of water across the studio!

One of the youngest volunteers is nineteen year old Erich Barganier.

I started volunteering at the museum in the summer of 2006 when I was 14. I was just becoming interested in Jazz, and I knew the museum had a really good music series. I asked the director of education, Peter Tush, if I could volunteer. He said I could run the projector behind the band and play movies over them. Whenever you went to a “s'real Friday,” the background movies were typically of my choosing. I don't think any other volunteer situation could fortify my character in the way that running the projector did.

From docent Marlys Meckler:

I like it when they exclaim — ah — I've got it, I understand now. I love to tell stories about the artist — how he did a specific painting.
For example, Venus de Milo with Drawers. Dali said, “If I want to know what she's thinking I pull out the drawer in her head and if I want to know what she's feeling, I pull out a drawer in her body.”
And a little girl on the tour said, “I understand. That lady has no arms so she stores all her stuff in the drawers.”

To even begin to understand the persona of Salvador Dalí, you would have to not only have complete docent training at the Museum, but would also have to immerse yourself into a thorough study of his life and ponder the amazing output of his life’s work.

One insight into his philosophy was set forth in a television interview in April 19, 1958 with Mike Wallace. Dalí expounded on genius, the subconscious, dreams, weakness, old age, death and religion. He said he glorifies old age, while stating that young people are “stupid — because the little young peoples completely stupid, you know” [Dalí’s exact words].

Dalí kept referring to himself in the third person and told Mr. Wallace matter-of-factly that “Dalí is immortal and will not die.” Mike Wallace was incredulous about these comments, to which he (Dalí) responded: “Exactly. Because Dalí is contradictory and paradoxical man.”

You can find the complete 30-minute televised interview at www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/ — then use the site’s search for “Dalí.” Click on “Salvador Dalí: The Mike Wallace Interview.” This takes you to the page with the transcript of the 30-minute interview, where you click on “Watch Video.” It is complete with television commercials of their cigarette sponsor, which was a large revenue producer for television in those days before cigarettes were banned from television sponsorship January 2, 1971. All material at that website is copyrighted by the Harry Ransom Multimedia Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

When researching for facts on Dalí, there are many references to this material quoted above, as the “Mike Wallace 60 Minutes interview,” but the actual interview was on ABC-TV ten years before that Sunday night fixture on CBS-TV even began to air.

Julie Feeley, a docent, offers these further remarks:

I have found it very stimulating and rewarding to explain Dalí’s art to visitors, young and old, from around the world. The “ah-ha” moments they experience upon “seeing” some of the double image paintings are joyful to me. I love observing the shift that takes place when visitors learn a bit about Dalí’s intentions and perspective and then dramatically shift how they view his art – even in just an hour’s visit. My personal knowledge about Dalí grows year after year as I read, see films, hear lectures and talk with others.
Some lessons I have learned from Dalí are to fill each day with some intellectual pursuits, think outside of the box and have some playful moments.

Spirals and helixes fascinated Dali. The architecture firm, Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum used this as the focal point of the interior. According to Yann Weymoth, design director for the architecture firm, "A treasure box needs to be about what is within it." The stairwell stretches up the center of the structure's three floors, a figurative walkway to the mysteries of life, among the many quirky design elements for the building. When one exits at the third floor, the mysteries of Dali's paintings begin to be revealed. The galleries are on this third level, for protection in case of major hurricane flooding, since the building overlooks Tampa Bay on St. Petersburg's waterfront.

Sandy Woodworth again:

Dali was very smart and expected people to be smart and to rise to his level when viewing his work. A lot of people come through who had met him and describe him as very personable and a gentleman and very polite. Whether you like his art, the period, or time of that art or the style of the art is up to you.

Sandy recalls her docent training nearly twenty-five years ago. She relates that it was harder than when she earned her MBA degree. Training is on-going, to keep docents’ skills up and ready to answer questions that visitors may have. Docents train for four months at the University of South Florida and must pass a final exam before they are accepted to lead visitors through the Museum.

Sandy enjoys visual props like the "moustache" made from black pipe cleaners and the loaf of bread clipped to her head. Susan Alderson, Northeast Journal photographer and managing editor demonstrates.

Sandy's personalality and her props help draw her tours into the nature of Dali's outrageous persona.

To the volunteers and docents of the Salvador Dalí Museum, it means commitment to an ideal, a sense of service, an emotional involvement that is fulfilling at a core level hard to describe in these mere words. It is best experienced while listening to any one of the many dedicated and talent docents talking about the experience of being in the presence of such an insightful and talented artist, whose spirit continues unabated at the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg.

Ever the confident artist, Dalí is famous for having said:

“Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure — that of being Salvador Dalí.”

Perhaps the words spoken to Mike Wallace in 1958 resonate even more enigmatically than first imagined. In the words of Museum Director Hank Hine, a visit to the Museum is to “drill and pipe into the wellsprings of the imagination.”

John L. Bailey is a long-time volunteer for several museums and organizations, including Ybor City State Museum in Tampa, where he has led historic walking tours on Saturday mornings for nearly 20 years.
Bailey is also an Emmy-award-winning video producer/writer, specializing in using your video and photographs to help create photobooks and DVD-based memories of family histories, events, birthdays and more. Contact him at 727-798-2846 or e-mail: John Bailey.