As a surprising and humorous way to decorate the cavernous Park Avenue Armory's drill hall, the Jewish Museum and David Stark used more than 5,000 T-shirts to form walls and a ceiling. The custom tees were painted with tongue-in-cheek takes on classic slogans, like "Frankie Says Relax It's Purim" and "Got Spiel?" "We love the fact that the characters of Purim—Esther, Mordecai, Haman, and Ahasuerus—could somehow be re-contextualized as the Fab Four, and thinking of that iconic T-shirt in which the Beatles names were lain out in the Helvetica font, we immediately made the leap to lay out our Purim names in that same format. And then that led to the blur of other iconic T-shirt graphics mixed with references to Judaism and Purim—all with a big smirk," said Stark.
Photo: Susie Montagna