In an age when museums are chasing younger audiences with boozy after-hours events, there’s a cunning logic to the Museum Of Bad Art’s newest home: Dorchester Brewing Company, where patrons can sip from a selection of expertly crafted ales while perusing a collection of crudely rendered artworks.
The museum, which has been homeless since 2019, will officially take up residency at its new digs with a grand opening reception the evening of Sept. 6. The inaugural exhibition, which is already up, features 40 of the collection’s “greatest hits,” including a tongue-forward portrait of former president John F. Kennedy and an imagined meeting between … is that Montezuma? … and what some might call a surfer dude with a dad bod.
Museum director Louise Reilly Sacco said the brewery was a perfect match for MOBA, a volunteer-run organization that does not charge admission. Not only was the Dorchester brewery willing to let the museum use its events space rent-free as its main gallery, but both parties quickly agreed bad art should be installed throughout the tap room.
“We’re very excited about this,” said Sacco, whose formal title, tongue firmly in cheek, is permanent acting interim executive director. “It meets all of the requirements: It’s open for long hours; it’s set up so they can let people in free; it’s easy to get to.”
For its part, Dorchester Brewing has undergone a major expansion over the past few years, quadrupling its space with a rooftop patio, enclosed greenhouse, events space, restaurant, and other amenities.
“It just seemed like a win-win,” said Derek Rayner, events manager for the brewery. “We’re hoping that it brings in a new crowd of people who haven’t been to our brewery yet, and they’re hoping to get some eyes on [the collection] that wouldn’t be on it normally.”
He added that initial reaction to the show has been “all over the place.”
“Some of the art is really bad,” he said. Some people “may not be really into it, but there have been a ton of people who do get it and are stoked. Either way, they notice it.”
Just take Clarence Leroy Hinds’s “The Damned Guy” (1970), a student copy of a figure from Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment,” here sporting an emerald green Speedo. And who could forget Alain’s “Steve Reeves as Hercules” (2019), a portrait in which the musclebound actor appears to have swapped his hands for hoofs of the Cretan Bull itself.
MOBA’s origins date to the mid-1990s, when an antiques dealer named Scott Wilson plucked a painting from the trash, thinking he might repurpose the frame. The actual painting, “Lucy in the Field with Flowers,” was unsalvageable: It portrayed an elderly woman in a blue dress sitting awkwardly (but maybe she’s dancing?), in a windswept field of flowers as absinthe-colored clouds gather behind her.
“He stopped at Jerry Reilly’s house, his friend and my brother, and Jerry said: ‘You can’t throw that out — it’s so bad it’s good,’” Sacco recalled, adding her brother hung it over his fireplace. “Once he did that, Scott and other people looked for paintings, which started Jerry’s collection and led to the founding of the museum.”
The museum held its first show in 1994 in Reilly’s West Roxbury basement, where MOBA remained until “a bus-full of seniors from Rhode Island pulled up.” From there, the museum found a home in the basement of the Dedham Community Theatre, later moving to the basement of Somerville Theatre, where it remained for more than a decade.
MOBA became a cult favorite over the years, garnering national and international press as a kitschy curiosity, the artistic equivalent of a car crash you can’t look away from.
But while the collection’s jokey appeal is undeniable, MOBA curator-in-chief Michael Frank said the museum is more than that.
“We collect art that was created in an attempt to make real art as opposed to a joke,” he said. “In general, something has gone wrong, either in the execution or in the concept.”
Frank, who often acquires works at thrift stores, yard sales, or through donations, said the collection now stands at roughly 800 works.
“I can’t pass an interesting pile of trash,” he said, noting that Allston Christmas, his version of an art fair, was upon us. “I picked up two frames yesterday.”
The museum is undeniably cheeky, but Sacco said there’s real value in looking at unsuccessful artworks.
“Our hope is very much the same as a traditional art museum,” she said. “We love to hear people arguing about a piece, raising questions about it, or seeing some meaning in it that we missed. These pieces, when people give them the time and the headspace, make you think and ask questions and do the same thing that traditional fine art can do.”
MOBA’s tenure at the Somerville Theatre lasted until 2019, when the Davis Square outpost began renovations. Then came the pandemic, and a three-year stint with no permanent home to show the museum’s collection.
Like other museums, MOBA developed digital programming during the pandemic, presenting curator talks on the collection. The museum has recently installed works in an empty storefront along Bromfield Street, and over the years it has organized numerous traveling shows, including an ongoing exhibition in Quebec City.
The museum doesn’t have gallery staff, but Sacco and Frank said they aren’t too worried about the artwork getting damaged or worse. Some paintings are behind glass, and they’ve been careful to avoid high-traffic areas where elbows or suds might damage the works.
The brewery’s Rayner added that, although MOBA’s responsible for the work, “we’re kind of in charge of making sure it doesn’t walk away.”
“We have eyes on it,” he said. “We have cameras.”
And there’s always that other deterrent: It’s just bad art.
Malcolm Gay can be reached at malcolm.gay@globe.com.