ISSUE 5 Summer 2023

Anthony Viera is an educator, artist and illustrator. He graduated in 2018 from College Unbound in Providence, Rhode Island with his Bachelor’s degree in Organizational Leadership and Change. His senior project and thesis focused on using illustrated storytelling to vocalize underserved communities. He is a published children’s book illustrator and has worked freelance as an illustrator and commission artist for nearly a decade. He taught painting, drawing and sequential art at AS220 Youth in Rhode Island as the Visual Arts Coordinator during his tenure at College Unbound. He now works at the Salvador Dali Museum as an operations manager while also teaching as an instructor for Sequential Art and Drawing courses at his alma mater. Anthony lives with his Partner and Yellow Lab in St. Petersburg FL.

Melanie Thiel graduated from the University of Tampa in 2020 with a major in International Studies/Political Economy and a minor in Psychology. As a teenager, she spent some time living up in Europe, where she gained a love of art, culture and history. Melanie joined the Museum staff in December of 2021 specializing in visitor experience, where her knowledge and appreciation for Dalí’s art grew. Her work for the Avant-garde Studies Journal has allowed her to combine her passion for research and art history. Seeing Dalí’s art through the eyes of first-time visitors at the Museum time and time again has given her a unique perspective into the lasting impact of Dalí’s work.

Kayla Dorsey is a 2016 Magna cum Laude graduate of the University of South Florida, where she achieved a B.A. degree in Anthropology with a minor in Art History. Kayla also attended the University of Central Florida and graduated Magna cum Laude in 2021 with a Master’s in Nonprofit Management. She joined The Dalí in 2017 and assumed her current role of Director of Visitor Experience in 2021. Kayla is interested in continuing the conversation about Dalí’s influence and Surrealism’s connection to the various groups that reflect The Dalí Museum’s visitors.

Kelsey Hallbeck is a former employee of The Dalí Museum starting her career with them first as a Library Intern in January of 2018 and concluding her tenure with the Museum this past March as the Museum’s Curatorial Project Manager. In addition to managing the Museum’s exhibitions and special projects, she served in multiple areas, assisting with presentations, publications and collections. This research project began as an effort to educate on the wide-spread surrealist movement in Japan, a goal she hopes is achieved with this paper.   

Ellen Williams joined The Dalí in 2021 as a store associate and has since taken on duties as a keyholder, shipping and receiving assistant and assistant in the library and archives and other curatorial projects. In a previous life, she edited and wrote articles for international zines and Tampa Bay area music publications – as well as upcycled and flipped antiques, vintage furniture and home décor online and in numerous area antique markets, including her own (now closed) brick and mortar shop in Gulfport. As a native to the area, Ellen enjoys visiting local museums, gardens and beaches, but is first and foremost a homebody, who prefers to hang out with her cats and her dog.

Shelby Schultz joined the Museum in 2021 and is now a Visitor Experience Manager. She studied world history and acquired a BA in History with a minor in Anthropology at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida. She wrote her senior thesis on the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten and if his radical shift to monotheism was one directed by religious ideology or political control. While modern history was not her area of expertise, she loves learning and growing her knowledge of art and history. Shelby recently graduated from the 2023 Dalí Docent class.

Jacqueline Hennecke is exploring the intersection of sociology and arts. Pursuing a B.A. in Social Research and Public Policy at New York University Abu Dhabi, her background in art theory and public policy has equipped her with expertise in curation, policy analysis and environmental sociology. Before joining the Dalí team for the summer of 2022, she interned at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts. She also interned at Villa La Pietra, a Renaissance museum in Florence. Jacqueline currently works as a counselor with Sotheby’s Institute of Art and as a Research Assistant at NYU Abu Dhabi. Her research projects focus on environmental migration and marketing, natural symbolism in European art, and Interwar art. Jacqueline aims to make lasting contributions to the fields of artistic and environmental research.