Love Terrible Paintings? You’re Not Alone

The Museum of Bad Art shines a light on untraditional artistic creations that are “too bad to be ignored.”

By Alanna Weissman

One of the many strange — and confusing — paintings on-view at the Museum of Bad Art. (MOBA)

That terrible painting you saw on the curb the other day might have looked like trash to you, but to one Boston-area museum, it’s a piece of fine art.

You won’t find any Mona Lisas at the Museum of Bad Art, where all that is weird, wacky, and awful gets a nail in the wall.

Instead, you’ll find paintings of ferrets in brothels, women riding lobsters, and anatomically incorrect nudes, all divided up into cleverly-titled categories such as “Poor Traits,” “Look Ma, No Hands!” and “Oozing My Religion.”

The bulk of the art comes to the museum by way of thrift stores, yard sales, and even the trash.

“We’re not collecting kitsch or schlock, you know, dogs playing poker, things that are produced commercially like that,” Curator-in-Chief Michael Frank told OK Whatever.

“We collect pieces that were made in what I believe was an honest attempt to make an artistic statement, to create real art, and clearly something has gone wrong, either in the execution or the original concept.”

Frank — who is also a professional musician and balloon artist — runs the museum with the help of volunteers.

The Museum of Bad Art was founded in the early 1990s and is located in the basement of an independent movie theater in Somerville, Massachusetts. Admission is free with the price of a movie ticket.

The Museum of Bad Art’s interior when it was located in the basement of a Massachusetts movie theater. (MOBA)

There are also more than 300 awful artworks on the museum’s website, which can be viewed for free.

Aside from its artworks, the museum has become a sort of conceptual art piece in and of itself, a send-up of what Frank called “the self-important world of art criticism.”

“I think what we do ends up being interesting as far as the larger questions of, ‘What is art? What is important in art?’ ” Frank explained. “We give light to works that would otherwise not be shared with the public.”

“Palmeras III” will forever change the way you see palm trees. (MOBA)

And since so much professional art can seem baffling to the average viewer — white-on-white paintings, minimalism, cubism — the Museum of Bad Art provides an accessible entry point to viewers.

It also underscores the subjectiveness of art, and how a piece’s worth fluctuates depending on who’s looking at it.

“There are some images in our collection that, if seen...on the wall of a contemporary art museum, many people would not know the difference.”

Despite having the phrase “bad art” in its name, the museum stresses that they’re not making fun of the artists.

“One thing that we’re not interested in doing is making anyone feel bad,” Frank said. “I don’t think of ‘bad art’ as opposed to ‘good art.’ I think of ‘bad art’ as opposed to ‘important art.’”

Frank is so fond of the pieces in his collection that he can’t even play favorites. Doing so, he said, is “like asking me to pick my favorite child.”

There are tons of so-bad-they’re-good artworks hanging on the digital walls of the Museum of Bad Art’s website, most with amusing descriptions written by Frank himself.

Here are some of our favorites and you can take a free tour of the rest of the museum’s catalog online.