Figueres,20 December, 1999
The Minister for Culture of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia, Jordi Vilajoana, today inaugurated the exhibition "Salvador Dalí. Dream of Venus", which can be visited up to 28 February at the New Rooms of the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres. Organised by the "la Caixa" Foundation and the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, the exhibition forms part of the commemorative events for the 25th anniversary of inauguration of the Dalí Theatre-Museum. The minister was accompanied by the mayor of Figueres, Joan Armangué; the president of the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, Ramon Boixadós; the director of the Dalí Theatre-Museum, Antoni Pitxot; and the director and assistant director of the Dalí Study Centre, Fèlix Fanés and Montse Aguer, respectively, who acted as commissioners of the exhibition.
The dream of Venus is the name that Dalí gave to the pavilion he designed for the 1939 World's Fair in New York, and which later served as inspiration for the Dalí Theatre-Museum. During assembly of the pavilion, on an esplanade in the Queens district, the artist fell out with the sponsors, who had altered some of his proposals and thus provoked his displeasure. Indeed, Dalí abandoned the project before its official inauguration on 15 June 1939. Prior to that, he had been involved in one of his famous scandals - breaking a shop window in the Bonwit Teller stores on Fifth Avenue - and had drafted the manifesto Declaration of the Independence of the Imagination and the Rights of Man to his Own Madness, which was released over New York from an aeroplane.
