Michael R. Taylor, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as he explores Dalí's hybrid combination of atomic age physics and Catholic doctrine he called "Nuclear Mysticism." Mr. Taylor's talk with examine the controversy surrounding Dalí's claim to be "the first painter of the atomic age" and the resulting lawsuit filed by Italian artist, Enrico Baj, who claimed that his own nuclear paintings preceded those of Dalí.
Michael R. Taylor is the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His most recent exhibitions at the museum include *Thomas Chimes: Adventures in ‘Pataphysics *(2007); *Salvador Dalí:The Centennial Retrospective* (2005), which he co-curated with Dawn Ades; and *Giorgio de Chirico and the Myth of Ariadne* (2002). Taylor studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where he wrote a master’s thesis on Richard Hamilton and a doctoral dissertation on Marcel Duchamp’s readymades. He has published widely on Duchamp, Dada, and Surrealism. Future projects include a tightly focused exhibition on Duchamp’s Étant donnés (2009) and a major traveling retrospective on Arshile Gorky (2009–10), which will situate his work within the context of Surrealism.