Niche travel

YOU’LL HAVE HEARD of New York’s MoMA but what about Boston’s MoBA? It might not be so famous but it’s way more fun. The Museum of Bad Art is the world’s only museum dedicated to the collection, preservation, exhibition and, most importantly, celebration of bad art. It was set up in 1994, when the owner fished his first picture out of a skip, complete with torn canvas.

Since then it has grown to a collection of around 600 works all of which meet a rigorously high standard, namely that it be “too bad to be ignored”. Only a tenth is on display at any time, which only gives you reason to return, if only to the website.

The gallery also publishes MoBA News, "the leading journal in the field of bad art".

The collection is divided into categories some of which will be familiar to gallery goers. This includes “portraiture”, in which there is a sub category entitled “Blue People”, including the inevitable work entitled “Till I was blue in the face” and a transgendered da Vinci-esque portrait known as “the Mana Lisa”.

And, while landscapes are a form of celebration of a particular place, the MoBA has a collection entitled “Unlikely Landscapes”. These are “singularly different than those in other museums. Ethereal, inexplicable nature is dominated like one broken spider leg resting on a toothbrush”. It is up to the viewer to solve the mysteries framed within its paintings, such as “Are those ice creams or mountains?”

There are astute critiques in the visitor book too, including one presumably referring to the gallery’s collection of “Noods” – “Her nipples seem to follow you around the room”.

The entire, glorious collection is available online at www.museumofbadart.org. Enjoy.