W
K
M
C ENTER FOR A RT AND CULTURAL HERITAGE
P.O. Box 2256  Abingdon, VA 24212
276-628-5005 (phone)  276-628-3922 (fax)
CONTACT : Katie Carrico, Dir. of Public Relations
415 Academy Dr.  Abingdon, VA 24210  kcarrico@wkmuseum.org
Abingdon, Virginia (October 19, 2012) – The William King Museum: Center for Art and Cultural
Heritage will offer a special guided tour of Dali Illustrates Dante’s Divine Comedy on Wednesday, October
31 at 7 p.m.
Dali Illustrates Dante’s Divine Comedy from the University of Tennessee’s Ewing Gallery features
100 color prints that Salvador Dali labored to produce over the span of nine years. The prints take a journey through Dante Aligheri’s epic poem The Divine Comedy, which includes the Inferno, Purgatorio, and
Paradiso. Each of the 100 prints corresponds to one of the 100 cantos in The Divine Comedy.
On this guided tour, led by Curatorial and Education Assistant Callie Hietala, the 34 prints of the
Inferno will be discussed.
“Through me you go into the city of weeping;
Through me you go into eternal pain;
Through me you go among the lost people;
…No room for hope when you enter this place.”
-Dante Aligheri, Inferno Canto III
The Inferno follows Dante and Virgil through the nine levels of Hell where they encounter mythological figures such as Cerberus, Minos and Charon. They also witness punishments of the unrepentant like thieves being bitten by snakes, gluttons under constant freezing rain and traitors frozen in a lake of ice.
“There’s so much that Dante wrote that I can’t include in a tour of the entire Comedy, so I’m excited to be able to go into detail in the Inferno, which is a really thrilling and shocking journey,” says Callie
Hietala. “It deals with monsters and other horrific creatures, so it’s great for Halloween. To me, it’s better than visiting a haunted house.”
The tour is free with regular Museum admission ($5 adults, $3 seniors; students, members and children are free). The tour will start at 7 p.m. The Museum will stay open until 8 p.m.
For more information about the William King Museum, including this and other events, please visit us on the web at www.WilliamKingMuseum.org
or reach us by phone at 276-628-5005.
William King Museum is located at 415 Academy Drive, off West Main Street or Russell Road, in Abingdon.
The Museum features five exhibition galleries, artist studios, a museum store and outdoor sculpture garden.
Educational programs in the visual arts are offered year-round for both children and adults, and school audiences are served by in-house and outreach programs. Accredited by the American Association of Museums, the William King

Museum is a partner of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and a member of the Virginia Association of Museums and is funded in part by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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