Museum of Bad Art

The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) is a privately owned museum currently located in Boston, Massachusetts, dedicated to celebrating the labor of artists whose work would be displayed and appreciated in no other forum. Founded in 1993, the museum collects art too bad to be ignored, maintaining a permanent collection of over 700 pieces. At any given time, 25 to 35 of these works are on public display. MOBA occupies a unique niche in the museum world, countering traditional institutional focus on masterpieces by instead collecting works with serious intent that have nonetheless gone horribly wrong. As co-founder Marie Jackson stated, the institution exists to celebrate an artist's right to fail, gloriously.

The museum originated in the fall of 1993 when antique dealer Scott Wilson retrieved a painting from between two trash cans on a Boston curb. He initially wanted only the frame, but his friend Jerry Reilly insisted on keeping the painting as well. Reilly exhibited the piece in his home and encouraged friends to find more bad art. After Wilson acquired a second piece, he and Reilly decided to start a collection. Reilly and his wife, Marie Jackson, hosted a reception in their West Roxbury basement, facetiously titled The Opening of the Museum of Bad Art. The events drew hundreds of visitors, overwhelming the small home. To cope with the crowds, the founders created a CD-ROM called the Virtual Museum Of Bad Art. The first official exhibition was presented in March 1994. By 1995, the audience had grown so large that a busload of senior citizens arrived, prompting a move to the basement of the Dedham Community Theatre. A second gallery opened in 2008 at the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square, Somerville, and a third location operated in Brookline starting in 2010. The original Dedham location closed in 2018 to make room for a screening room.

MOBA's curators seek original works created with serious intent that possess significant flaws without being boring. The museum is not interested in deliberate kitsch, commercial works, or art made by children. A mere lack of technical skill does not guarantee acceptance; the work must possess an oh my god quality and be compelling. According to curator Michael Frank, the most interesting pieces often demonstrate some technical skill combined with questionable decisions, such as over-the-top imagery. Each piece in the collection is accompanied by a description of its medium, size, artist name, acquisition history, and an analysis of the artist's possible intentions. The museum has hosted rotating and traveling exhibitions with specific themes, including Freaks of Nature, Hackneyed Portraits, Bright Colors/Dark Emotions, and Know What You Like/Paint How You Feel.

The signature piece of the museum is Lucy in the Field with Flowers, the painting Scott Wilson rescued from the trash that inspired the founding of the collection. Another notable work is Eileen by R. Angelo Le, which Wilson recovered from a trash can with a knife slit in the canvas, a flaw the museum noted adds a dramatic element to an already powerful work. Eileen was stolen in 1996, and the museum offered a reward that started at 6.50 dollars and rose to 36.73 dollars. A thief demanded a 5,000 dollar ransom, which was not paid, but the painting was returned in 2006. Another stolen work, Self Portrait as a Drainpipe attributed to Rebecca Harris, was taken in 2004 with a 10 dollar ransom demand, but was quickly recovered and returned. In 2009, the museum auctioned Studies in Digestion by Deborah Grumet on eBay for 152.53 dollars to raise funds for the Rose Art Museum during the financial crisis.

The museum has occupied several unconventional spaces. Its first dedicated space was the basement of the Dedham Community Theatre, a building described in 2004 as ramshackle. The collection was situated just outside the men's room, where, as the South China Morning Post noted, the constant flushing supposedly helped maintain a uniform humidity. When a second gallery opened in the Somerville Theatre in 2008, the works were placed near both the men's and women's restrooms. Following the theft of Eileen in 1996, the Dedham gallery installed a fake security camera accompanied by a sign reading, Attention. This gallery is protected by a fake security camera. The Brookline location opened in 2010, and the original Dedham site closed in 2018.

The Museum of Bad Art is currently located in Boston, Massachusetts. Access to the museum has historically been tied to its unconventional venues. At the Dedham Community Theatre, the gallery had no fixed hours and was open only while the theater upstairs was open. The original Dedham gallery was free and open to the public, whereas the Somerville location was only free for attendees of the Somerville Theatre. The museum has gained international attention, featured in off-the-beaten-path guides to Boston and international newspapers, and its works have been exhibited in museums in Virginia, Ottawa, and New York. Despite criticism that it is anti-art, the founders maintain that the collection honors the sincerity of artists who persevered despite something going terribly wrong in the process.