New York
"I don't want to change the museum; I want to express it."
— Filip Noterdaeme,
Founder and Director of HOMU
Mission Statement
The Homeless Museum of Art (HoMu) is an art project created by New York-based artist Filip Noterdaeme. Since its inception in 2002, it has at turns been a live-in museum in a rental apartment in Brooklyn, an activist's initiative, an exhibit in a vacant artist studio, a collection of original artworks, and a mock museum booth embedded in a commercial art fair. Juggling irreverence and sincerity, HoMu seeks to subvert the increasingly impersonal, market-driven art world and expose the sellout of cultural institutions to commerce, cronyism, real estate, and star architects. HoMu exists in a state of perpetual flux and continues to defy the rules of the established art world.
http://www.homelessmuseum.org/
2002-2003: Beginnings
Noterdaeme decides to create a fictitious museum to mock the cultural establishment. He gives his museum the moniker "homeless," calling it the Homeless Museum, or HoMu, to suggest a museum without a home and allude to one of the last taboos and most pressing issues of our time. He invents an alter ego for himself, the "Museum Director," and enlists other fictitious characters to form HoMu's Board of Directors. He sends tongue-in-cheek, "official" letters to high-profile cultural institutions and corporate organizations. He produces several HoMu videos, depicting, among others, a Dada prank, a staged board meeting, and a panhandling robot.
