THE MUSEUM OF BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS
odds are you have your own ‘relics of relationships past’ tucked away somewhere: tear-stained love letters, gifts, old photos, concert tickets… In a museum in Zagreb, Croatia, you’ll find items just like these (and much stranger) on display.
Conceptualised by exes Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišic, the Museum of Broken Relationships houses a collection of donations from around the world, each with a short description of the significance of the object. Some items might seem mundane: a toaster, a pair of heels, a positive pregnancy test. More alarmingly, a prosthetic leg. A taser. An axe with a note that reads: ‘In the 14 days of her holiday, every day I axed one piece of her furniture.’
Next to a box of maple-and-seasalt popcorn: ‘She was a regional buyer for a grocer and that meant I got to try some great samples.
I miss her, her dog and the samples, and I can’t stand to have this fancy microwave popcorn in my house.’ He couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it either, so he donated it and put those feelings on display. The old adage holds true: misery loves company.
It all began with a break-up: the founders were divvying up their possessions in 2003 when they came up with the idea. ‘We found it very hard to say goodbye,’ Vištica explained in Afar magazine.
‘We wanted to keep alive some of the great memories we had.’ The museum’s very first piece? A windup rabbit they’d named Honey Bunny. Ironically, the museum has made them partners of a different kind. ‘People think the bunny is our object,’ Vištica told The Harvard Gazette. ‘But really the museum is our object.’
Besides permanent installations in Zagreb and Los Angeles, there is a virtual museum and a travelling installation that has crossed the globe. Pop-ups in Buenos Aires, Singapore, Istanbul, Brussels and Cape Town have all included some local heartbreak.