Art Too Bad To Be Ignored

By Erika Smith

The credits roll and moviegoers stream out of the small rooms of the Somerville Theatre. Some return to the main lobby, where along with popcorn and soda they can buy wine, beer, frozen candy, and hazelnut flavored coffee (“And we don’t mean that syrup crap,” a sign reads). All pass the signs reading “Museum of Bad Art,” and many choose to follow them to the gallery. There, moviegoers, some still munching on popcorn or sipping sodas, look at, laugh at, and talk about such “Bad Art” masterpieces as Sunday on the Pot with George, a pointillist painting of an overweight man in his underwear sitting on a chamber pot, and Safe at Home, an oil painting depicting a Red Sox game interrupted by a headless faun. The captions are intentionally tongue-in-cheek. “Can the swirling steam melt away the huge weight of George’s corporate responsibilities?” asks the caption for Sunday on the Pot with George.

The Somerville branch of the Museum of Bad Art is located next to the basement restrooms, in a small corridor containing about forty pieces of art, possibly including the circular velvet sofa – although the Museum does not claim it as one of its pieces, visitor Joel Knopf names it as his favorite artwork because “it looks like a large velvet top hat.” Despite its small size, out-of-the-way locations (there’s another branch in Dedham Square, also located in the basement of a theater), and volunteer staff, the Museum of Bad Art has achieved both general notoriety and a large fan base – there are over 10,000 “Friends of MOBA.”

MOBA was formed in the fall of 1993 when founder Scott Wilson found the museum’s first piece in a trash pile on a Boston street. According to a 2007 Boston Globe article, Wilson showed it to his friend, Jerry Reilly, who asked for the painting and hung it in his basement, where it was soon joined by bad art found in trash cans and thrift stores or donated by friends. The first painting, Lucy in the Field with Flowers, shows an unintentionally contorted old woman sitting in an armchair in the middle of a lopsided field.

The caption beneath the portrait illuminates the origins of the MOBA “cornerstone”: Many years after the MOBA was established, Reilly received a phone call from “Lucy’s” granddaughter, Susan Lawlor, who had read an article about the museum in the Improper Bostonian and recognized the painting as a portrait of her grandmother (whose real name was Anna). The portrait had been commissioned a few years after Anna’s death and had hung in Lawlor’s aunt’s living room until the late 80s, when the house was sold. MOBA now sells postcards and posters of Lucy in the Field with Flowers, which is also featured on the cover a book about MOBA, The Museum of Bad Art: Art Too Bad To Be Ignored.

Reilly’s collection of bad art soon grew too big for his house, and in 1994 it moved to the Dedham Community Theatre in Dedham Square, Massachusetts. The museum again expanded in 2008 when it opened a second gallery at the Somerville Theatre in Somerville, MA. Both galleries are located in the basement of the theater, next to the bathrooms. “I think it’s an appropriate location,” jokes visitor Maren Chiu.

Although the galleries are similarly sized, the Somerville Theatre gallery, which is accessible by T, is open during usual theatre times, while the Dedham Community Theatre “has no fixed hours,” according to the MOBA website. “I prefer Somerville because it’s a little bit bigger and brighter. The only disadvantage is you have to buy a movie ticket to get in,” says Permanent Acting Interim Executive Director Louise Sacco (“We don’t have salaries, but we have great titles,” Sacco says).

Watching a movie first might enhance the experience of visiting MOBA. “I just saw Where the Wild Things Are. It was really interesting to go from that, which was such a creative movie, to this,” says Knopf. The theater staff also encourage visitors: Knopf visited the museum gallery because a concessions worker told him he should.

Despite its small size, MOBA is no stranger to scandal. The MOBA website has a section entitled “Controversy” in which it mysteriously explains, “We are most humbled to make public the fact that even within the confines of our esteemed Museum establishment, within the ranks of our very own Members, there is controversy. Pleads to make public these sordid details, to purge the Museum records of suspicion have not gone unheard. We are in the process of gathering information that shall unsully our reputation.” However, the webpage does not provide further information; instead, it provides a link to the MOBA newsletter. Interested readers must search through the online gallery to find information about the controversy.

Perhaps the major scandal is an art theft that occurred in 1996, when Eileen, a portrait of a young girl’s head surrounded by blue squiggles, was stolen from the gallery walls during an invitation-only party for participants in the MOBA CD-ROM. MOBA donors offered a reward of $6.50 (later increased to $33.65) for the return of the painting and enlisted the media in its search: Boston’s TV-4 and TV-7 news programs and the Boston Globe reported on the theft. A few days later, MOBA received a note that read, spelled out in letters cut out of magazines and without punctuation, “What do you call a woman with one leg shorter than the other Eileen.” The painting was eventually returned in 2006.

However, one does not have to steal a painting to form a connection to MOBA. Membership is free, requiring only an email address. There are currently over 10,000 Friends of MOBA, all of whom receive email newsletters and invitations to MOBA events. Members also have the opportunity to have their words immortalized by submitting titles and captions to “The Interpretator’s Challenge,” a monthly contest to explain a painting. Art enthusiasts can legally obtain a piece of bad art for themselves: MOBA occasionally auctions off bad art for the benefit of various institutions; recent beneficiaries include Brandeis University. Posters, post cards, and T-shirts featuring prints of favorite paintings can be purchased at the MOBA online gift shop, which, according to Sacco, is the main source of MOBA income. MOBA is even willing to take a sacred place in its Friends’ lives: in 2009, a marriage was performed at the Somerville MOBA gallery, presided over by MOBA Curator-in-Chief Michael Frank.

MOBA accepts donations from anyone, and its website includes instructions for submitting art. Besides restrictions on paint-by-numbers pieces, velvet, and kitsch, MOBA requires that submissions “have some quality that draws you to them – or perhaps grabs you by the throat and won’t let go.”

Over the years, MOBA’s art collection has grown to over 600 pieces, an astronomical number when compared to its gallery space. The exhibition is changed three or four times a year, and MOBA also has an online gallery, so interested parties can view favorites such as Bone-Juggling Dog in Hula Skirt even when it’s not on display.

Despite its small size, MOBA is relatively famous, having been featured in magazines and newspapers as various as the Boston Globe, Wired Magazine, South Africa’s Sunday Times, and Israel’s Ha’aretz. In Boston it has achieved a general notoriety: most visitors to the Somerville gallery have heard of MOBA, even if they haven’t visited before.

“I’d heard it [the Somerville gallery] was, well, a must-see,” says visitor Gina Heeren. “I’d forgotten about it but then I saw the sign and wondered.” This was Heeren’s first visit to MOBA, but she plans to return. “I will absolutely come again – and I will be bringing friends. Everyone deserves to see this,” she says.

However, MOBA hasn’t let fame affect its mission: Sacco names her biggest accomplishment not as the museum’s appearance in the National Enquirer but simply as keeping the museum’s admission free. “It’s very satisfying to have kept the Museum of Bad Art going. We’re the only place in the world that collects, celebrates, and exhibits bad art,” she says, naming financial strain as her greatest difficulty in running MOBA.

“Celebration” is the right word to describe MOBA’s outlook on its art. “Every time I go I see something different that I like,” says Chiu, who names Bone-Juggling Dog in Hula Skirt as one of her favorite pieces of bad art.

“It’s swell,” says another visitor, Jim Logan, whose favorite piece is All Things Must Pass, a wood and sheet metal hanging of an ambiguous vehicle that the caption asserts is “clearly a diesel powered semi-tractor trailer truck” emblazoned with the title.

However, some visitors do not share Chiu’s and Logan’s sentiments. Sacco explains, “Every once in a while somebody gets angry with us. They say, ‘Who are you to say what’s bad art?’” She clarifies, “We never make fun of anyone. Who are we to say what’s bad art? Well, we’re the Museum of Bad Art. Museums of Fine Art can say what’s fine art… We never make fun of the artist. If we’re making fun of anyone, we’re making fun of the art writers, the art commentators, art speak.”

Some viewers agree. “I think the commentary is really what makes it funny, what makes us think it’s bad art - which is an interesting comment on museums in general, if you think about it,” says Knopf.