Homeless Art: For Museum Directors Who Double As Beggars (From A3)

We look to many things for records of history – photographs, books, religious texts – but one of our central sources of information is the museum. There, we find paintings that bring us closer to the Renaissance, documents that help us understand the past, and retrospectives that assist us in the universal recognition of an artistic movement. The agenda of a museum is as important as the content of a historical text that will almost wholly represent a period in time. In 2000, when the Guggenheim Museums in New York City and Bilboa agreed to present an exhibition of Giorgio Armani garments, receiving $15 million in “contributions” from the Armani clothing company, the museum directors must not have considered the damage that they were facilitating (Vogel). The exhibition spaces became showrooms for Armani, wherein visitors were being charged to enter a museum that very much resembled a high end clothing shop, where sales and promotions are imperative. More and more frequently, museum culture has denounced artistic value and significance so as to replace them with marketability and universal appeal.

Filip Noterdaeme, a long-time educator and gallery lecturer at the Guggenheim in New York City, has spoken up and created a project that brings light to nearly all of the flaws and controversies that define many modern-day museums. Noterdaeme uses a variety of tools and mediums, continuing to add on to the project that calls itself The Homeless Museum of Art, or HOMU. The Homeless Museum seeks to challenge the unfortunate direction that cultural institutions are following in hopes of becoming more profitable and popular (The Homeless Museum of Art). Noterdaeme, HOMU’s director and founder, uses his knowledge, subversive nature, humor and unpredictability to make art projects that give us a better understanding of the business of museums.

It is important to acknowledge that HOMU is not an anti-museum, but rather a deviant one that chooses to express museums and museum culture (Noterdaeme). For example, at the HOMU Gift Shop, a pack of the director’s “specialty” cigarettes will cost you $99.99. This is anexpression of the typical museum gift shop today, where a plastic brooch might cost as much as a gold necklace might cost elsewhere. Through concepts that enthuse and motivate viewers, HOMU is an inspiring force that calls for others to participate and speak up against the sellout nature of museums today. Using a HOMU has prompted others to explore new art avenues and persuade recognition and change in society, battling ethical issues – it is a new medium through which artists, businessmen, and the homeless alike are motivated to speak up and be recognized. HOMU is a response to the museum’s growing relationship with market capitalism – the director’s understanding of what a museum should be like.