by Beatrice Leeming
Tourists to Zagreb might be tempted by its medieval Old Town or its Gothic Cathedral. They might come for its award-winning Christmas market, or, in the summer, for re-enactments of medieval conflicts put on by the Order of The Silver Dragon. Round the corner from the players, an increasing number have headed on to the Museum of Broken Relationships.
What started as a joke when Olinka Vištica, a film producer, and Dražen Grubišić, a sculptor ended a four-year relationship, metamorphized into a travelling – and now permanent – exhibition in the Upper Town of Zagreb. The collection on display is made up of public donations – objects and memories that are sent from all over the world, symbolic of a relationship ending and displayed with a personal description. The concept was a ‘global archive of failed romances [that] could help couples move on from heartbreak’, according to a NYT critic, a phenomenon – based on visitor numbers – that has proved an explosive success.[1]
The display cannot be comprehensive, but nor does it try to be. Next to objects and stories of tragic and painful heartbreak are humorous mediations on incompatibility: a pair of gloves, for instance, are accompanied with a note: ‘She tried to impose her fashion sensibilities on me.’
The exhibition itself has travelled globally, and versions of the concept have opened permanently in other countries. What started as a break-up has become a way to talk about loss and the transformative impact of time: on feelings, on the meaning we ascribe to objects, and on the potential role of the museum. Walking through the collection is a moving experience because it is to witness an all-too human experience. The hope is that by displaying the materiality of heartbreak, its emotionality can be made easier, true when its breaking up with one’s own body (one woman sent in a bra after a mastectomy) as often as getting over bereavement. It’s not a museum about healing. Its palliative care for pain.[2]
References:
[1] Alex Marshall. ‘When Relationships Fail, This Museum Keeps the Stuff Left Behind’. The New York Times, 14 February 2023, sec. Arts. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/arts/design/museum-of-broken-relationships.html.
[2] Lorraine Boissoneault. ‘The Museum of Broken Relationships’. JSTOR Daily, 4 September 2015. https://daily.jstor.org/museum-of-broken-relationships/.
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