We posted about the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia, quite a few years ago. It displays objects that symbolize broken relationships from all over the world, along with the stories behind them. You don’t have to go to Zagreb, though, because the museum is opening an exhibit at Root Division in San Francisco beginning on Valentines Day.
“We were trying to preserve the emotional heritage of past loves, because no one talks about them,” artist Olinka Vištica—who co-founded the museum with her ex-boyfriend, artist Dražen Grubišić—tells me during the installation at Root Division. “Self-help instructions will tell you to forget about everything and be prepared for something new so you get ‘cured.’ But we never thought that our relationship was an illness. So we thought it would be great to preserve something from it, like proof that it ever existed.”
Olinka Vištica explained the concept and history of the Museum of Broken Relationships to Collectors Weekly, in a post that also shows us some of the exhibits and their stories.