For Immediate Release

October 21, 2004

Penniless at the Modern: A Civil Action Organized by Artist Filip Noterdaeme for the Homeless Museum (HoMu)

Sunday, Nov. 21, 2004, 10:30AM-5:30PM
Museum of Modern Art, New York

To denounce the Museum of Modern Art's new $20.00 adult admission fee, the Homeless Museum (HoMu) will organize a peaceful action beginning at 10:30 AM on the first day the new fee is activated, Sunday, Nov. 21.

In the tradition of demonstrations by the Art Workers' Coalition in 1969, HoMu is rallying volunteers to pay the $20.00 required entrance fee with rolls of pennies only. By replacing a crisp bill with twelve and a half pounds of pennies, we intend to remind the Modern that its $20.00 ticket price weighs heavily on the audience the museum promises to serve.

Participants have been instructed to bring their own admission fee in rolls of pennies only. HoMu will distribute HoMu buttons to all participants. However, participants have been asked to act as single individuals, not as a group. The organizers have made it clear that they will not endorse or tolerate any acts of civil disobedience and that they will not assume responsibility for any illegal action on the volunteers' part.

At 4:30 PM in the Sculpture Garden, artist Filip Noterdaeme, creator and director of the Homeless Museum, will strike a pose to portray the suffering documented in Dorothea Lange's 1932 photograph, Woman of the High Plains, Texas Panhandle. This unauthorized performance will be documented and titled Penniless at the Modern, 1932-2004.