New york salutes me: Dalí in America

On November 14, 1934 Salvador Dalí arrived in NY with his wife Gala. It was the first time in the USA. He had been invited by Julien Levy to witness the opening of his third solo exhibition in America. The very afternoon of their arrival, the New York Evening Journal published the first photo of the couple sitting on the back of a bench. The photo footnotes said: Salvador Dalí. Spanish artist who put on his wife two chops of lamb and then painted it appetizing, poses next to her newcomer with the French line Champlain. It was stated, in connection with his recent participation in the World's Fair in Chicago, that he had been the star and had left Cubists and Impressionists in the shadow. It was his Portrait of Gala with two ribs of lamb in balance on his shoulder (c.1933), the work that aroused the greatest expectation among the press: "New York salutes me."  But,  what was known and what had been seen of Dalí, of surrealism and of the surrealists in the United States at the moment when the artist breaks into the scene for the first time?