The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) is a privately owned museum whose stated aim is ‘to celebrate the labor of artists whose work would be displayed and appreciated in no other forum.’ It has branches in Dedham and Somerville, outside Boston. Its permanent collection includes 500 pieces of ‘art too bad to be ignored,’ 25 to 35 of which are on public display at any one time.
Explaining the reasoning behind the museum’s establishment, co-founder Jerry Reilly said in 1995: ‘While every city in the world has at least one museum dedicated to the best of art, MOBA is the only museum dedicated to collecting and exhibiting the worst.’ To be included in MOBA’s collection, works must be original and have serious intent, but they must also have significant flaws without being boring; curators are not interested in displaying deliberate kitsch.
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Museum of Bad Art
Secret Museum
The term Secret Museum (Gabinetto Segreto) principally refers to the collection of erotic or sexually explicit finds from Pompeii, held in separate galleries in the Naples National Archaeological Museum, the former Museo Borbonico. The British Museum also contained secret rooms containing erotica. Throughout ancient Pompeii, erotic frescoes, depictions of the god Priapus, sexually explicit symbols, inscriptions, and even household items (such as phallic oil lamps) were found.
Ancient Roman culture had a different sense of shame for sexuality, and viewed sexually explicit material very differently to most present-day cultures. Ideas about obscenity developed from the 18th century to the present day into a modern concept of pornography.
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Neon Museum
The Neon Museum in Las Vegas features signs from old casinos and other businesses displayed outdoors on over 6 acres. The museum is restoring the La Concha Motel lobby as its visitor center. For many years, the Young Electric Sign Company stored many of these old signs in their ‘boneyard.’ The signs were slowly being destroyed by exposure to the elements. The museum is restoring the signs and placing them around the Fremont Street Experience. The Neon Museum maintains twelve restored signs throughout Downtown Las Vegas. Some can be seen on a self-guided visitors walk through the Fremont Street Experience. Three others have been added in recent years to the median of Las Vegas Boulevard in front of the eventual site for the Neon Museum itself.
The Neon Museum is located on Las Vegas Boulevard and Bonanza, across the street from Cashman Center and along the Las Vegas downtown museum corridor. The boneyard preserves over 150 neon signs from the Nevada area. While the core of the collection is from the old Yesco Boneyard, private donations and loans have expanded the collection to the current size. Important historical pieces in the boneyard include the signage from the Moulin Rouge Hotel, the Stardust, Desert Inn and Caesar’s Palace as well as many others. Not just neon signage, the museum also houses fiberglass sculptures including a giant skull from the Treasure Island among others.
Moon Museum
The Moon Museum is a small ceramic wafer three-quarters of an inch by half an inch in size, containing artworks by six prominent artists from the late 1960s. The artists with works in the ‘museum’ are Robert Rauschenberg, David Novros, John Chamberlain, Claes Oldenburg, Forrest Myers, and Andy Warhol.
This wafer was supposedly covertly attached to a leg of the Intrepid landing module, and subsequently left on the moon during Apollo 12. The moon museum is considered the first Space Art object. While it is impossible to tell if the Moon Museum is actually on the moon without sending another mission to look, many other personal effects were smuggled onto the Apollo 12 lander and hidden in the layers of gold blankets that wrapped parts of the spacecraft.
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Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is an art museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year.
Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, it is one of the 20th century’s most important architectural landmarks. It is located at the corners of 89th Street and Fifth Avenue (overlooking Central Park). It opened in October of 1959, ten years after the death of Solomon Guggenheim and six months after the death of Frank Lloyd Wright.
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Experience Music Project
The EMP Museum (formerly the Experience Music Project) is an a nonprofit institution dedicated to popular culture (from the art of fantasy, horror cinema, and video games to science fiction literature and legendary costumes from screen and stage). Founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2000, the museum has numerous public programs including ‘Sound Off!’ an annual 21 and under battle-of-the-bands that supports the all-ages scene and ‘Pop Conference’ an annual gathering of academics, critics, musicians and music buffs. In addition EMP in collaboration with the Seattle International Film Festival presents the ‘Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Film Festival,’ which takes place annually every winter at the world renowned Seattle Cinerama.
The Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame was founded by Paul Allen and Jody Patton in 2004. It incorporated the formerly independent Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame established in 1996. EMP is located on the campus of Seattle Center, adjacent to the Space Needle and the Seattle Center Monorail, which runs through the building. The structure itself was designed by Frank Gehry, A concert venue capable of holding up to 800 guests, Sky Church (named in honor of Jimi Hendrix) boasts 70-foot ceilings, state-of-the-art sound and lighting, and a mammoth indoor HD LED screen.