Exhibition Review: Museum of Broken Relationships
Ascending the hill Grič’s steep slope in Croatia's capital leads one to Zagreb's mediaeval nucleus that is the Upper Town and within it a baroque palace housing the Museum of Broken Relationships. Founded by Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić, local artists who ended their four-year relationship, the exhibition has since established a sizeable array of personal artefacts from failed love affairs around the globe and acts as an outlet for people to, in its words, “overcome an emotional collapse through creation”.
Stepping through bottle green doors brings unsuspecting visitors to a series of dimly-lit chambers. Adorning walls is no shortage of letters, presents, and other declarations of love from one to the other. One such artefact is a letter dated 24th April 1969 trailing into lines of original poetry. Though uplifting, it reminded its recipient that the relationship was doomed to end; the lovers never met again afterwards. Other romantic tokens on display include a photograph of a Florida lake in the 1990s where lovers skipped school and a final postcard that the donor's great-grandmother received from her German lover who died in the Second World War.
Enjoying their equal share of the stage are peculiar artefacts that beckon visitors to take a closer look at accompanying inscriptions. In one corner, a destroyed VHS tape sits in tatters. The tape was of the contributor's father's wedding to a woman who ruined his life and mistreated him until his death; his daughters ran it over with their car, stabbed it with a screwdriver, shot it with a rifle, sawed it in half, and torched it. According to the inscription, this process was 'highly therapeutic.'
Not limited to artefacts from romantic relationships, across galleries are strewn emblems of love between family and friends. In one chamber’s centre is a shellac record of the donor's father singing Schubert's 'Adelaide' before retiring his dreams of being an opera singer. A box of pizza mix stands against a wall, an ambassador of a love affair between its owner and pizza. Its inscription is a letter from the contributor to pizza wherein the former declares everlasting love for the food and grief at parting ways – a tragedy brought on by gluten and casein intolerances.
Some ornaments occupy more space than a small glass case. A door covered in colourful signatures, scribbled messages, and small hearts inhabits a corner, a memento of the donor's deceased son whose friends wrote the messages. Stretching across a wall is a wide print of a star's spectrum in the Orion constellation, a 26th birthday gift between astronomers in Beijing, China. This is accompanied by a Mandarin verse about the star's light reaching Earth following a 26-light-year voyage. It ends (translated): 'Here you meet your starlight, and I meet you.' A large book – once blank, now filled – on a pedestal permits visitors to leave their own stories, initials, and short messages.
Upon exiting the gallery, visitors are treated in the gift shop to myriad souvenirs with witty references to relationship clichés. These include erasers marked 'bad memories eraser', candles labelled 'love at first light', and notebooks with covers titled 'a complete list of my jealous observations'. Beyond the gift shop is a café with similarly-themed decor: in chalk on a notice board is the Wi-Fi password – aptly set as 'just friends' – and a poster captioned “Martinis! Helping People Lower Their Standards Since 1927!”
A dazzling beacon of poignant allure despite its nondescript exterior, the Museum of Broken Relationships flaunts universality of both theme and collection. The phenomenon of failed relationships is widespread throughout all cultures and societies around the world; fittingly, the artefacts originated from an impressive range of countries and continents. Further setting the exhibition apart is its continuously growing nature as anyone across the globe can contribute artefacts or share their stories on the online gallery at brokenships.com. The exhibition is open daily from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., closing an hour earlier in winter.