Reilly and his wife, Marie Jackson, held a party in their basement to exhibit the collection to date, and hosted a reception they facetiously titled "The Opening of the Museum of Bad Art".

[12] Word of the museum's collection continued to spread until, according to "Permanent Interim Acting Director" Louise Reilly Sacco, "it got completely out of hand" when a group of senior citizens on a tour bus stopped to see it.

A 2006 exhibit titled "Hackneyed Portraits" was designed to "pick up some of the slack" when the David Hockney show at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts closed.

[19] Exhibitions titled "Bright Colors / Dark Emotions" and "Know What You Like / Paint How You Feel" have been held in the academic gallery at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Current MOBA curator Michael Frank placed Studies in Digestion—a four-panel piece showing four renditions of the human digestive tract in various media by artist Deborah Grumet—on eBay for a buy-it-now price of $10,000; the first bid was $24.99.

Eileen was originally acquired from the trash by Wilson and had a rip in the canvas from being slashed with a knife, "adding an additional element of drama to an already powerful work", according to MOBA.

[35] Prompted by the theft of Eileen, MOBA staff installed a fake video camera over a sign at their Dedham branch reading (in Comic Sans): "Warning.

[36] In 2004, Rebecca Harris' Self Portrait as a Drainpipe was removed from the wall and replaced with a ransom note demanding $10, although the thief neglected to include any contact information.

"[39] As stated in the introduction to The Museum of Bad Art: Masterworks, the primary attribute of an objet d'art to be acquired by MOBA is that it must have been seriously attempted by someone making an artistic statement.

A lack of artistic skill is not essential for a work to be included; a prospective painting or sculpture for the collection ideally should "[result] in a compelling image",[40] or as honorary curator Ollie Hallowell stated, the art must have an "Oh my God" quality.

Michael Frank says they are not interested in commercial works like Dogs Playing Poker: "We collect things made in earnest, where people attempted to make art and something went wrong, either in the execution or in the original premise.

[45] MOBA curators jokingly suggest that more appropriate venues for such works would be the "Museum of Questionable Taste, The International Schlock Collection, or the National Treasury of Dubious Home Decoration".

[22] Marie Jackson reiterated this thought, saying "I think it's a great encouragement to people... who want to create [and] are held back by fear, and when they see these pieces, they realize there's nothing to be afraid of—just go for it.

[46] Each painting or sculpture MOBA exhibits is accompanied by a brief description of the medium, size, name of the artist, as well as how the piece was acquired, and an analysis of the work's possible intention or symbolism.

[48] The captions—described as "distinctly tongue-in-cheek commentaries" by David Mutch of the Christian Science Monitor[4]—were primarily written by Marie Jackson, until the "dissolution of the MOBA interpretative staff"; the task was then taken over by Michael Frank and Louise Reilly Sacco.

As the first work acquired by the museum, Lucy is "a painting so powerful it commands its own preservation for posterity", setting a standard by which all future acquisitions would be compared.

[50] Kate Swoger of The Montreal Gazette called Lucy a "gorgeous mistake", describing her thus: "an elderly woman dancing in a lush spring field, sagging breasts flopping willy-nilly, as she inexplicably seems to hold a red chair to her behind with one hand and a clutch of daisies in the other".

"[52] The Times recounted comments left by a museum visitor regarding the "endless layers of mysteries" the image offers: "What is Norman Mailer's head doing on an innocent grandma's body, and are those crows or F-16s skimming the hills?

"[46] Sunday on the Pot with George (acrylic on canvas by John Gedraitis; donated by Jim Schulman) has been deemed "iconic" by Bella English of The Boston Globe, who assures the work is "100 percent guaranteed to make you burst out laughing".

[46] Many admirers of the first work donated to MOBA are hypnotized by the image of a portly man wearing "Y-front" underwear while sitting on a chamber pot, in pointillist impressionism similar to the style of Georges Seurat.

[56] The subject of this painting has been "tentatively identified" by the Annals of Improbable Research—the creators of the Ig Nobel award—as John Ashcroft, former United States Attorney General.

[57] A visitor in response to seeing George displayed in the Dedham Community Theatre basement, wrote: "Someone had slipped into the bathroom as I took in this painting and began peeing loudly into a toilet.

"[58] MOBA's accompanying caption introduces questions and observations: "Can the swirling steam melt away the huge weight of George's corporate responsibilities?

This pointillist piece is curious for meticulous attention to fine detail, such as the stitching around the edge of the towel, in contrast to the almost careless disregard for the subject's feet.

Inspired by a cartoon of a dachshund, she chose that as a subject, but was unhappy with the effect until she added a hula skirt she had seen in a magazine, and colored dog bones she spied in a pet store.

[63] A professor at Boston University offered his thoughts: "The location of the museum as much as its collection suggests a commitment to the abject and a belief in the power and force of culture's marginalized effects.

The plays were based on the MOBA pieces Mana Lisa, Invasion of the Office Zombies, My Left Foot, Bone-Juggling Dog in Hula Skirt, Gina's Demons, and Lulli, Fowl and Gravestone.

[43] Jason Kaufman, a Harvard professor who teaches the sociology of culture, wrote that MOBA is part of a social trend he calls "annoyism", where mass media venues promote performances and artists who mix the deliberately bad with the clever.

"[5] Bad art is in vogue, as a movement that rejects the anti-sentimentalism that marked earlier disdain for artists such as Norman Rockwell or Gustave Moreau, according to Solomon.

The researchers showed respondents images from MOBA and New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and asked them to rate each painting on a scale with two ends representing "Very Attractive" and "Very Unattractive".