Museum of Bad Art

The Museum of Bad Art, known as MOBA, sets out to collect and exhibit the worst of art. It looks for original works made with serious intent in which something has gone terribly wrong. Pieces must be flawed but compelling rather than merely amateurish or boring, and deliberate kitsch is excluded. Some of the most interesting works show real technical skill undone by questionable decisions such as over-the-top imagery.

The privately owned collection holds more than 700 pieces of "art too bad to be ignored," with only a few dozen on display at a time. It began in 1993 when antique dealer Scott Wilson showed friends a painting he had recovered from the trash. Receptions soon outgrew a friend's home, and the museum moved to a theater basement in Dedham before relocating to Boston.

Dozens of off-the-beaten-path guides to Boston mention MOBA, which suits visitors drawn to the offbeat. Its founders reject the charge of being anti-art and present the collection as a tribute to sincere artists and, in co-founder Marie Jackson's words, their "right to fail, gloriously."