While I was walking with my sister through the Upper Town, capturing nice views of beautiful Zagreb, our attention went to a museum. Museum of broken relationships. A very intriguing and alluring name. On the brochure, we've read something about it and decided to enter its story.
It was founded by a film producer Olinka Vištica and an academic painter Dražen Grubišić, who were in a relationship. After they broke up, they didn't know what to do with the things that were left after the relationship. They thought about opening a museum in which they could put them. They asked their friends to do the same. That led to a collection of objects which had a world tour and was presented in Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, Macedonia, Philippines, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Turkey, UK, USA.
It is a place where people are invited to donate things that remind them of their ex-lovers and shortly describe why is that particulate object important to them. That way you can give a little piece of you and your love life to the museum.
Don't let the name of the museum fool you. Even though it is about ended relationships, a lot of stories are told in a way that will either make you laugh, cry or leave you in deep thought.
Like this one:
A PHARMACEUTICAL BOWL
A business relationship turned into a love affair. Both went bust.
The objects of the stories can be as simple as teddy bears, dolls, toys, a child's pedal car, books, cd-s or as brutal as an ax used to break an ex's furniture, hand-cups, wedding dress, high heels.
European museum forum gave it a prestigious Kenneth Hudson award for the most innovative and daring museum project in Europe.
Museum of broken relationship has two permanent museum outposts.
It was opened in Zagreb in October 2010 and in 2016 in LA in the center of Hollywood, right next to the Dolby Theater, where the annual Oscars are held.
You can find details about the museum as well as some stories on their internet page.
I would like to share with you a few more interesting stories, so I could interest you to visit it yourselves or perhaps donate an object with a short description of your love troubles, intrigues or sorrows.
CATERPILLAR TIMUNAKI
This is a story about a truly big love and a long-distance relationship. It lasted for 20 months. They dreamt of a life together, so he bought a huge caterpillar. Every time when they saw each other they would tear off one leg. They decided when they ran out of legs to tear, they would marry. But the relationship broke and the caterpiller didn t become a complete invalid after all.
A STUN GUN
The stun gun traveled all the way from Buffalo to Zagreb. Its mission was to protect his „little treasure“ from the evil people while he was away. The love ended because he mixed planes and flights. Instead of boarding the plane which was supposed to take him home, he boarded the one that took him to a rich widow. To this day, the stun gun has never been used.
A SMALL NIKE FOOTBALL
They met at the camp. He loved this ball and never let it out of his hands. He declared his love to her. She left her boyfriend after three years of relationship. They were crazy about each other. After three months he left his ball at her place, he never came back, he never called. A year later she got an e-mail from him in which he apologized for his behavior.
A simple idea of collecting the objects of an ex-lovers has become a big hit. Hope you've enjoyed it and that one day you will visit Museum of broken relationships.
