Friday New York Times headline:

Loving the Lowbrow (It Has Its Own Hall of Fame)

Nut graf:

With its U.F.O.’s, suicidal clowns, smiling genitals and other shocking, humorous or bleakly sentimental imagery, “bad art” — or “vernacular painting” and “found art” in polite circles — has achieved the status of a genre, a tiny but devoted corner of the art world. It’s a place where the passion of an amateur is prized over the skill of a technician and where an artist’s identity is of little or no importance.

And the center of that universe is right here in Greater Boston, where the Museum of Bad Art (now with three good Bad locations!!!) has been lowering the standard since 1994.

High praise from the Times piece:

No venture into the world of bad art is complete without a trip to the Museum of Bad Art (called MoBA for short), currently with three sites in the Boston area. All offer an art historical immersion in the movement. During a tour of one exhibition space, the basement of a movie theater in Somerville, Mass., the museum’s volunteer curator, Michael Frank, said most of the art on display was donated by patrons, genre enthusiasts and sometimes artists themselves. The roughly two dozen works on display are a fraction of the museum’s 500-piece collection.

“They were things that I’m convinced were created in all seriousness, but clearly something has gone wrong, either in the execution or in the concept,” said Mr. Frank, who pays the bills by working as a musician and balloon artist named Mike the Hatman. “Sometimes we’ll have poor technique that results in a compelling image. But a painting that shows poor technique isn’t necessarily bad art.”

But it is good copy:

A walk through the current exhibition, “Bigger, Better, Beautifuller,” offers oversize evidence of off-kilter paintings (and psyches). Still, some of the images bring to mind Klee, Botero, Klimt and other big names.

Comments in the museum’s guest book summed up the genre’s dark appeal. “This collection is disturbing, yet I can’t seem to look away,” wrote Voyeur From Canada. “Just like a hideous car accident.”

Another wrote: “Her nipples follow you around the room. Creepy!”

Sort of like the Hooter Lisa.

Disturbing.