Sure, everyone can appreciate a fine Picasso, a historic Monet or a pop culture-inspired Warhol, but what happens to the pieces that wind up rejected by the art world at large? Do they die a slow death at the city dump? Are they forgotten in thrift stores across the nation? Do they rot in a dark basement, abandoned by their artists and shunned by purveyors of so-called “fine art?”
Not if the Museum of Bad Art has anything to say about it.
This quirky travel find is bringing new life to otherwise shunned artwork at two galleries in the Boston, Mass. area. The Museum of Bad Art, or MOBA, started its quest to appreciate bad art simply enough when Scott Wilson stumbled upon a picture frame in a sidewalk trash pile in Boston. He shared the frame’s painting, “Lucy in the Sky with Flowers,” with friends, who encouraged Wilson to start a collection of “bad art.”
Ten years later, the gallery has grown from a handful of pieces of flawed artwork hung in a friend’s home to a 600-piece collection rotated throughout MOBA’s galleries. The museum’s two galleries at the Somerville Theatre and Brookline Access Television office house between 20 and 40 pieces at a time, offering the public a second chance to appreciate the best there is when it comes to bad art.
MOBA focuses on artwork that “would never hang in a museum of commercial gallery, yet they have some quality that draws you to them – or perhaps grabs you by the throat and won’t let go.” Visitors are sure to see authentic (although failed) attempts at artistic statements over kitsch for kitsch’s sake.
For more info on the worst the art world has to offer, check out the Museum of Bad Art website.
(Main image: By Tom Eiler, 2006, Museum of Bad Art)
