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01 Dec 2000

A Plastic Fantastic Friendship

Topics: Life Experience-ObituaryRelationships-Core RelationshipsArts-GeneralEducation-Schools, Libraries, Museums
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A. Reynolds Morse (MBA 1939), founder of Ohio-based Injection Molders Supply Company and a longtime friend of artist Salvador Dalí, died last August in Florida. He was, the St. Petersburg Times (August 22, 2000) reported, "a political conservative who developed a passion for one of the most avant-garde artists of the 20th century, a man who clipped coupons for restaurant specials while giving away an art collection valued in the millions."

Morse and his wife, Eleanor, bought their first Dalí, Daddy Longlegs of the Evening-Hope!, to celebrate their wedding in 1943 and soon became avid Dalí collectors, according to an obituary in the New York Times (August 23,2000). "We plunged instead of hedging," Morse once explained, "and after a while I was becoming known as the nut who was backing a dark horse. Or vice versa."

During the course of what the New York Times termed "a sometimes turbulent friendship," the Morses traveled with Dalí and his wife, Gala, to Paris and Rome and to Dalí's home in Spain. Over the years, they published seven books about Dalí, who died in 1989, and amassed nearly one hundred of the artist's paintings and more than one thousand Dalí drawings, watercolors, prints, and objects. In 1980, the Morses presented their collection to the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, their retirement residence, which opened the Salvador Dalí Museum to house and exhibit the work.

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