With St. Valentine fading in the rear view mirror, we are left with the detritus of love gone bad.
From exp magazine, February 8, 2023:
A toy bunny. A ‘stupid frisbee.’ A ‘toaster of vindication.’ If it reminds you of your ex, the curators will take it.
Over 19 years, the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia, has amassed more than 4,000 items: watches, stiletto shoes, espresso machines, self-empowering books, wedding gowns, angry dolls, axes, and breast implants. They’re all items that left a severe mark on the hearts of the people who donated them. Now, they’re displayed for all to see in a 10,000-square-foot baroque palace in Zagreb’s Gornji Grad, or Upper Town — a historic hilltop neighborhood of charming little cobblestone streets.
The collection began in 2004, when Dražen Grubišić, a prolific visual artist, and Olinka Vištica, an arts producer, broke up. Afterward, Grubišić found himself trapped by an object that still held emotional value: a toy bunny that he and Vištica had each left with the other while traveling abroad. How would they deal with the bunny post-breakup?
“I have always found burning and destroying objects barbaric,” Grubišić says. Apparently, so had Vištica. The former lovers talked about creating a place where items like their bunny could rest in peace — and where these cast-off artifacts would be treated like found art. In 2006, they put up an exhibition in a shipping container in the garden of a Zagreb art museum, containing items donated by residents of the Croatian capital. The exhibition made quite an impression. Soon, boxes filled with objects and stories started coming their way, often from beyond Zagreb. Popularity planted the idea in their minds of creating a permanent museum. In 2010, the Museum of Broken Relationships opened its doors.
Visitors wind through seven rooms, each with a poetic title, such as “Body of evidence,” “Archaeology of the heart,” and “The doors we dare not open.” Smaller museum items are displayed in cases along the walls; others are placed atop boxes.
Now, broken-hearted lovers can ship their romantic memento and its accompanying story directly to Zagreb. So can anyone with a token of a lost platonic relationship. The donations are typically anonymous. “People have donated items related to war, family, breakup with religion, or breakup with profession,” Grubišić tells me over coffee in the cozy cafe inside the museum....
....MUCH MORE
