Let Me Tell You About a Dream I Had: The Miss Rockaway Armada

The Philadelphia Art Alliance (PAA) commissioned the Miss Rockaway Armada, an internationally recognized group of approximately 25 artists and performers from all over the United States, to create a flotilla of boats made from salvaged materials, organize several parades and Vaudeville-like performances, and install a building-wide exhibition. Collectively titled Let Me Tell You About a Dream I Had, the deliberately ragtag project, curated by Melissa Caldwell, challenged conventional notions of proper museum display, decorum, and community engagement—in a very traditional setting—while addressing pressing environmental issues associated with renewable resources and the handmade. The project's "catalog" took the form of a box containing related ephemera designed by the participants.