This project was designed and installed while I was an employee at Atkin Olshin Lawson-Bell and Associates Architects, Philadelphia.  I served as Project Architect for the project.

In the late 19060s and early 1970s, a group of educated, arts-oriented Jewish women at the Young Men's and Women's Hebrew Association were responsible for bringing some of the hippest, most avant-garde art from the Coasts to Philadelphia.  The Arts Council introduced Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Christo, Richard Serra, Roy Lichtenstein and others to the city in their small gallery space long before the Philadelphia Museum of Art had any interest in showing such controversial young artists.  The Arts Council mounted one exciting show after another at the Y, the highlight perhaps being 1967's Museum of Merchandise, in which the gallery was converted to a retail space selling artist-designed everyday objects.

In the 2003 exhibit A Happening Place, curator Cheryl Harper and I worked together to install selections from many of the shows mounted by The Arts Council 30 years earlier, including a full scale reproduction of a portion of the Museum of Merchandise installation.  The original MoM had walls coated with a fluffy white spray-on foam material: this material was replicated with spray-on sound insulation made of shredded newspaper.  A very early piece by Christo, a paper-wrapped storefront, was re-erected in the gallery after being stored in the Philladelphia Museum's basement since its original debut in Philly.  While the main gallery exhibited original artworks from the era's shows, the entry gallery mounted archival material such as letters from the artists, exhibit catalogues and entry tickets, and press clippings.