Student Surrealist Art Exhibit

The Student Surrealist Art Exhibit at The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, is an annual juried art exhibition of work by Florida middle and high school students. It is a gallery experience for anyone drawn to surrealism, student creativity, or the imagination of Salvador Dalí. This year's theme is "Future-Casting and Fortune-Finding." The exhibition has run for more than forty years.

What to Expect

Students are asked to respond to Dalí and the Surrealists by experimenting with surrealist techniques such as visual transformation, dislocation and symbolism. The theme invites them to do what Dalí spent his life doing: imagine a future before it exists, then work to bring it about.

The theme draws on Dalí's own story. At seventeen he defied the instructions for his entrance exam to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, trusting his own perception. He went on to build Dalí the artist, the persona and the myth, and in the Dalí Tarot he cast himself as The Magician, an archetype of creativity, mastery and turning ideas into reality. His Imaginations and Objects of the Future series pictured inventions and realities that did not yet exist. In The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory he took apart his own best-known imagery, a reminder that neither ideas nor futures are fixed.

Visitors are invited to sit with the questions the theme raises. Who will you be, and what will the world become ten, twenty or fifty years from now? Is that future waiting for you, or are you creating it right now?

The exhibit unfolds as three distinct student shows, one after another, at the museum:

- a Pinellas County show
- a Hillsborough County show
- a Statewide show

Each presents juried work, so what hangs on the walls changes as the season moves from the local shows to the statewide one.

The Setting

The shows are held at The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, a museum devoted to the work of Salvador Dalí. Seeing student art in that setting puts the young artists' ideas in conversation with the painter who inspired them.

Before You Go

Visitors need no prior experience with art or surrealism. The exhibition is presented in English.

For teachers and families whose students hope to take part, a few points matter:

- The exhibit is open to Florida middle and high school students.
- Students may not submit their own artwork. Art teachers submit on their students' behalf.
- A student not enrolled in an art class during the current semester can still take part, because any art teacher at the same school may submit for them.
- Each show has its own guidelines and its own digital submission deadline. Pinellas entries go through the Pinellas Art Office, Hillsborough entries through the Hillsborough Art Office, and statewide entries through an online entry system. Some information has changed, so read the guidelines carefully.

The museum also offers video resources for teachers and students: "Surrealism: The Big Ideas," "How to Make Surrealist Art," and "Why Teach Surrealist Art." Closed caption versions are available for the first two. Exhibitions from earlier years can be viewed online, and photos of older statewide shows are available too, which gives a good sense of the range of work before you visit.

The exhibitions, competition and receptions are funded by an anonymous donor and in part by a program endowment fund established by the Craig and Jan Sher Philanthropic Fund, with additional support from the museum's corporate partner, Bloomin' Brands.