Visitors to the Chelsea Art Museum hungry for an unusual sort of aesthetic treasure can get a glimpse into the minds of the likes of Buddy Ebsen, Sophia Loren, and Dee Dee Ramone. “Star Art,” a show lining two tight hallways and the small upstairs Project Room gallery, displays celebrities’ mostly rudimentary attempts at creating fine art.

The show is a whirlwind of kitsch: It also features Jonathan Winters’s Dali-inspired “Thoughts of a Hollywood Actor While Drowning in His Pool,” Victoria Gotti’s series depicting the too rich and too thin, and Jack Kevorkian’s disturbing birds-eye view of a man clawing the walls as he descends into a dark hole.

Three prints by Ebsen, who played Uncle Jed on “The Beverly Hillbillies,” are magnificently awful. In one, an Ebsen figure snuggles a cardinal next to his cheek and as he awkwardly leans down to pet a cat. All of the paintings include cheery, disproportionate-sized animals, such as a hound dog that comes to his shoulder and a goose the size of a pony.

The exhibit is drawn from the collection of Baird Jones, a curator at Webster Hall who also writes on art and gossip. He said his full collection of celebrity art is worth $2 million, a large investment but not one he takes too seriously from an artistic perspective.

“The key question is if I look at the signature, did the artist sign it or did the artist autograph it?” he said. “Red Skelton will actually sign the work five or six times. If it’s a clown, you’ll see it in the shoe, in the ruffle. It’s ridiculous; it’s kitsch. Quite clearly you’re looking at an autograph. Anyone who’s [a legitimate] artist would be reducing the value by repeated signatures.” Mr. Jones acquired many pieces from autograph auctions; he considers a Fred Astaire self-portrait he picked up for $25 one of his best bargains.

So how did a glorified autograph collection end up in an exhibition in a legitimate museum? “This is the barbarians at the gate,” Mr. Jones said happily. “What we’re seeing here is a museum saying, ‘This is pure entertainment. We’re going to give them the lowest common denominator.'”

The producer and curator of the Project Room, Nina Colosi, put it more delicately. The Project Room is part of the museum’s education program, she said. It has an eye toward “new concepts in all art mediums” and gets significant latitude in choosing what to display. Ms. Colosi conceded that the “Star Art” pieces do demand a different kind of viewing than if they were created by unknown artists. Inevitably, “you find yourself trying to read into their personal lives,” she said.

Mr. Jones stuck up for a few of the artists’ talents. David Byrne, whose photo-collage of a gun floating on wings of paper money is on display, attended the Rhode Island School of Design. Anthony Quinn studied with Picasso.

After all, in a post-Andy Warhol art scene, fame and talent are often blurred. Mr. Jones mentioned Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Peter Max, and Jasper Johns (whose paintings are currently on display at Matthew Marks Gallery, a few doors down from the museum) as examples of the phenomenon. Although these men have been canonized by the art world, Mr. Jones mused, “At what point are we really dealing with souvenir?”

While most of these works would never be seen in public if not for the affixed autograph, Mr. Jones speculated that some of the better art is doomed to be viewed as kitsch despite deserving better. Peter Falk, who Mr. Jones called “an example of an extremely talented artist,” sells his sketches for as little as $100 on his Web site. When it’s of quality, celebrity art is “probably the best bargain in the art world,” Mr. Jones said.

The president of the Chelsea Art Museum, Dorothea Keeser, who is a native of Germany, sees the show as uniquely American. “What attracted me very much,” she said, “was the idea that people, especially in America, are not bound to one life for the rest of their days. … You are not as bound to what you started when you were 20 years old as you are in Europe.”

It’s that Hollywood sense of utter confidence that connects the works in “Star Art.” Beyond the particular insights – Ms. Loren’s fondness for airbrushing, for example – the works will remind viewers of a larger truth about the celebrity mind and the art world: Sometimes, all it takes to make art, on canvas or on screen, is the steadfast belief that one deserves to.

Discussion: Saturday, 4 p.m. Exhibit: Through Tuesday, June 14, Tuesday-Saturday, noon-6 p.m., Thursdays open until 8 p.m., Chelsea Art Museum, 556 W. 22nd St. at Eleventh Avenue, 212-255-0719, $6 general, $3 seniors and students, free for members and visitors 18, $3 all visitors on Thursday evenings.