The Museum About Museums

On May 10, 2004, Belgian-born artist Filip Noterdaeme sent a letter to the director of the Guggenheim Museum, Thomas Krens, proposing an alternative solution for the museum's decaying façade. (Currently wrapped in scaffolding, its restoration is scheduled for completion in late 2007). Mr. Noterdaeme stated that the building's cracks were a sign of "the ailing cultural landscape of New York City." Writing as the director of the Homeless Museum (HoMu), he proposed the museum forgo expensive repairs and instead paint all the cracks Homeless Orange — his brand of florescent orange — in order to acknowledge "the advent of homelessness as a culturally significant phenomenon."

HoMu is not an accredited institution. Rather, it is Mr. Noterdaeme's gesamtkunstwerk, a museum about museum culture that uses the idea of homelessness as a critical lens. On a recent afternoon, sitting in HoMu's Café Broodthaers — which is also Mr. Noterdaeme's kitchen — he described it as "a fictitious museum with many quirky elements, but, in the end, it is about a serious issue: The degradation of art through commerce."

Because HoMu is also Mr. Noterdaeme's residence there are no set hours of operation and visitors must make appointments in advance. He hosts mostly word-ofmouth open house events, including one this Sunday celebrating the acquisition of a new gas stove.

It is more antidote than anti-museum. Directed by Mr. Noterdaeme's bearded alterego and staffed by figures like Madame Butterfly (Director of Development), Florence Coyote (Director of Public Relations), Slave Man (Chief Curator), and Robobum III (Treasurer), HoMu combines wry Dada absurdity and riotous performance with a razor-sharp concept.

Initially a Web-only conceptual piece, Mr. Noterdaeme inaugurated HoMu in 2003 — 10 years after being expelled from Hunter College for, as he says, "undermining the authority of the conservative faculty" — with an exhibition in Chelsea of the $0.00 Collection. Needing a permanent home for his project, in 2005 Mr. Noterdaeme clandestinely installed Ho-Mu in his two-bedroom Brooklyn Heights brownstone apartment. The Center For Education is the fireplace ("because education is the first thing to go up in smoke") and the Curatorial Department is the bathroom ("an intimate space for serious business"). A dirty leak in the ceiling became an anonymous "gift" to the museum, now known as "Liquid Gold."

Quoting Emily Dickinson's "I dwell in possibilities," Mr. Noterdaeme views what he does as offering possibilities. Upon entering, the visitor is greeted by Madame Butterfly — played by the cabaret performer Daniel Isengart, dressed in full geisha drag — and asked to step onto a broken scale in order to determine the "Pay What You Weigh" admission fee. Once in, Madame Butterfly begins a guided tour of the museum. Ho-Mu's permanent collection includes the Homeless Simulator (2003–2005); MoMA HMLSS (2005), a valise containing miniaturized masterpieces from MoMA, and "Captive Audience" (2005), a proposal to install human-scaled glue traps in museums so visitors would be forced to look at the artworks.

The tour ends in the Staff and Security Department — the bedroom. On the floor is Florence Coyote, a taxidermied coyote inspired by Joseph Beuys' "I Like America and America Likes Me" (1974). Without warning, Florence utters prerecorded phrases such as artist Lawrence Weiner's statement, "There is nobody walking away clean in this world any longer."

"Critique is easy, to point the finger from the sidelines, from the outside," Mr. Noterdaeme said. "I am critical of these institutions because I love them, not because I hate them." He sees his project as honoring the legacy of Hilla Rebay, the artist and visionary behind the founding of the Guggenheim, by extending her commitment to education through his performances. Indeed, Mr. Noterdaeme has spent many years working in museums. He was an educator and lecturer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for nine years, and is currently a freelance lecturer at the Guggenheim.

With "Incredible Shrinking Museum (ISM)," a recent, not yet realized proposal, Mr. Noterdaeme now wants to literally give a museum back to the people. He envisions an outdoor museum-like structure, composed of a 100-ton block of glycerin soap, colored, of course, Homeless Orange, into which visitors are invited to carve out their own personal chunk of culture, as big or small as they wish. Eventually, both the natural elements and the reductive carving will consume the structure entirely. As Mr. Noterdaeme puts it, "Museums are dirty businesses. We need to purge ourselves."

Open by appointment only (info@homelessmuseum.org, 718-522-5683).