The Museum of Bad Art

If you are an art lover there is a museum that you may or may not want to visit. The Museum of Bad Art is as the name implies a museum dedicated to "bad" art. The museum which now has three permanent galleries. The original gallery is located in the basement outside of the men's room of The Dedham Community Theater in Dedham, Massachusetts.
The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) is aim is "to celebrate the labor of artists whose work would be displayed and appreciated in no other forum". Started in 1994 by Scott Wilson and Jerry Reilly after Wilson found a painting in the trash waiting to be collected.

The painting "Lucy in the Field with Flowers" was originally saved for it's frame. It wasn't long before the collection started growing and Reilly and his wife had an exhibition of the art in the basement of their home. The exhibition proved to be very popular so popular in fact that it was determined that a permanent spot was needed to house the works. In 1995 the space in outside of the basement men's room was opened. The museum is free of charge and open only when the theater itself is open.

The Dedham Community Theater is a somewhat run down building and the space is dingy but the collection is amazing. The popularity of the museum lead to the opening of a second gallery in the basement of the Sommerville Theater in Davis Square a trendy neighborhood in Sommerville, Massachusetts. The second gallery is only accessable to ticket holders to events at the theater.

Like all museums security is a major consideration. MOBA not unlike the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has a theft from their collection. In 1996 "Eileen" a portrait was stolen from the Dedham gallery. The museum offered a reward of $6.50 for the return of the painting eventually increasing the reward amount to $36.73. In 2006 the museum was contacted and a ransom demand of $5,000 for the return of the painting was received. When the demand was not paid the painting was returned. It was because of this theft the museum installed a fake video camera with the sign "Warning. This gallery is protected by a fake security camera." This was apparently not enough of a deterent because in 2004 the painting "Self Portrait as a Drainpipe" by Rebecca Harris was stolen and a ransom demand of $10 was issued. This too was ignored and the painting along with a $10 donation was returned.
The museum focuses on bad art not crafts or kitsch. Their motto is "Art to bad to be ignored" and submission standards are very high. Nine out of ten submitted pieces are rejected for not being bad enough. Children's art is not included in the collection. They also do not collect "lesser" art like black velevet paintings or paint by numbers. What pieces make the cut have to have the "Oh my God" quality according to curator Ollie Hollowell. The museum has an on-line collection and sells books with some of it's masterpieces. This can be see at their wesite: http://www.museumofbadart.org/

The Museum in the Cemetery

Los Angeles has a lot of museums and many of them are quite small and obscure. One of the oddest is The Forest Lawn Museum. This is a museum in a cemetery.  It is not a museum about cemeteries it is an art museum. Forest Lawn is on a hill in Glendale and was the first of its kind. There are almost no grave stones but flat markers. The founder Hubert Eaton thought traditional grave yards with memorial sculpture to be depressing and wanted a cemetery that looked like a park. On top of one of the many hills that make up the property is a large chapel and attached to it is Forest Lawn Museum.

The permanent collections include the largest stained glass collection in the US and a huge western bronze collection. In the permanent collection are also art representing the peoples around the world and includes a maoi from Easter Island. There is a rather large room that serves as an exhibition space for varying shows. Past shows have included solo exhibitons of Matisse, Goya and Rembrandt.
The museum is well worth the trip as Forest Lawn itself is beautiful and its museum is a hidden gem.

Museum of Death

“The bats have left the bell tower The victims have been bled Red velvet lines the black box”

It is a beautiful sunny LA day. I pull into the parking lot on Hollywood Blvd. and park. On the street I walk to the door recessed in bougainvillea I have arrived. I am at the Museum of Death. At the door of the inner sanctum of the museum (I guess this would be death’s door) I am met by JD the owner/curator of the Museum and gallery next door. “Welcome to the Museum of Death” he extends his tattooed arm and we shake. He is warm; very friendly and totally punk rock. I am directed through some velvet curtains into the Serial Killer room and told if I have any questions to let him know. BAM there I am alone in a room with an electric chair and walls covered by paintings from the hands and minds of serial killers. This is the Museum of Death get into it and over it. I move on after my fill of John Gasy’s creepy clown paintings. There is room after room of ghastly treasures to come! Caskets, bones, autopsy tutorial videos, cases filled with various mortician tools the list is endless. I was totally enthralled by a wall covered in matchbooks from funeral homes. There is a plenty of death ephemera in every room. This is Hollywood so celebrity deaths are not forgotten. There is a room dedicated to the Manson Family with plenty of gruesome Sharon Tate photos and creepy Charlie art. Heaven’s Gate has its own little room too complete with authentic costumes and bunk beds. Dead rock stars are always a crowd pleaser and the Museum of Death pulls out all the stops with its G G Allin collection. I personally loved the juxtaposition of Marilyn Monroe’s autopsy photos and JFK’s. There is a small room of taxidermy that is very interesting. The animals are mainly albino and eerily beautiful. One of my favorite rooms is a screening room decorated in a funeral home fashion. I watch a little punk rock while I gathered my thoughts before heading out to the real world aka the gift shop. JD is ushering a small group of tourists into his chamber of horrors as I enter the room. We chat about the museum and the gallery next door. He tells me the museum started out in San Diego and moved to Hollywood about 10 years ago and into this Hollywood Blvd. space fairly recently. The building was once a recording studio owned by Ray Charles in the 1960’s and a slew of punk bands recorded in a studio in the section of the building around the corner. Enough people come to the museum to keep the doors to his collection open and JD seems to like it that way. This isn’t Madame Tussaud’s it’s the real thing. That’s a real decapitated head in there! The admission is worth the price believe me! I walk out to the sidewalk after meeting JD’s Siamese two headed turtle. I get into the car and radio is playing “Detachable Penis”. How odd I think to myself, “I just saw a picture of one.”