Dystopian Art Fairs: Filip Noterdaeme Interviews Cornell DeWitt and Amanda Coulson

Filip Noterdaeme is the founding director of the Homeless Museum of Art (HoMu), which art critic Tyler Green once called the “wittiest critique of big American museums.” You may have seen Noterdaeme at his museum booth near the High Line Park in New York City, where he frequently invites strangers to sit for a chat with he and his “Director of Public Relations,” a taxidermied coyote named Florence.

(Filip Noterdaeme, Director of the Homeless Museum of Art, at High Line Park in New York City)HoMu is an exercise in relational aesthetics that I experienced by chance on a sunny Saturday in May walking back from a couple of Chelsea galleries. Not only does Filip operate HoMu, but he is also an art history and cultural studies professor at the New School and NYU, and a museum educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim. He debuted HoMu at the Armory Show in 2005 and his work has been well documented by publications including The New York Times. 

We met, and I invited him to interview art fair directors Amanda Coulson of VOLTA and Cornell DeWitt of PULSE. These are two of the major satellite art fairs, or fairs that open concurrently and alongside the major fairs like Basel, The Armory Show, and Frieze. 

In the resulting short film (above), Filip interviews Cornell during the PULSE show’s installation on the eve of its opening. He also interviewed Amanda at his HoMu booth in Chelsea after we met her at a restaurant down the street. The result is, in Noterdaeme’s words, “a candid portrait of the new playground of the rich where art has become profitable currency and the party never seems to end.”

- Scott Chappell, co-founder / editor

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Visit Filip Noterdaeme and HOMU