There Is A Real Museum Of Broken Relationships Where People Store Their Heartbroken Stories And Their Symbols, Here Are 40 Of The Most Interesting Ones

To learn more about the Museum of Broken Relationships, we reached out to the museum’s Collection Manager, Charlotte Fuentes, via email, and she was kind enough to have a chat with us. First, we wanted to know how the museum came about in the first place. “Like so many other things in life, the idea of the Museum of Broken Relationships was born out of a personal experience,” Charlotte told Bored Panda. “It first occurred to Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić as a concept in a late night conversation, one of many Dražen and Olinka had during their breaking up, while desperately trying to say goodbye to each other as their relationship was obviously running out of fuel.”

“They were obsessed by the belief that the moments they lived together remained present in the banal, everyday objects that were lurking at them from every corner of the house as silent witnesses to their separation,” Charlotte went on to explain. “This late night conversation somehow gave birth to the simple idea to collect the objects that were too painful for them to keep, and those of a few friends who had also endured break-ups."

"However, it took a period of over two years before the idea fully formed itself and came into existence," she continued. "They made an installation during an art show and displayed them anonymously in a ship container, using stories of their former owners as the only text. They named this place the Museum of Broken Relationships. At the time, they were proud of their little art project and quite unsuspecting of what would happen…”

“The first installation in the Shipping container in 2006 immediately caught the attention of the international audience,” Charlotte told Bored Panda. “This simple idea snowballed over the years into an international traveling show that still goes on. The Museum has since toured internationally, holding 63 exhibitions in 32 countries, simultaneously creating an ever evolving, community built collection that challenges our ideas about heritage. Today our collection counts more than 3000 objects and it is growing regularly with every traveling exhibition, but also daily since everyone can donate by filling out a contribution form on our website. In 2010, they decided to found a permanent place, a brick-and-mortar museum in Zagreb that has housed our collection ever since.”

We were also curious about what the experience of visiting the Museum of Broken Relationships is like. “At its core, the MoBR is an ever-growing community-built collection of objects donated by individuals all over the world, each one a symbolic memento of a past relationship, accompanied by an anonymous story of its donor as the only text,” Charlotte says. 

“It is a Museum about love and life. People find comfort in knowing that we all go through the same rollercoaster of emotions when it comes to love. Museum of Broken Relationships is an invitation on an empathetic journey to the depths of the human heart,” she went on to explain. “It is a testimony to our ultimate need for love and connection despite the difficulties that go with it. It is a desire to connect visitors in meaningful ways across growing divides of class, community, and culture that seem to define our world.”

“The freedom is given both to the donator and to the viewer/reader to interpret what is before them, as life, in general, lends itself to myriad interpretations. This blurring of the lines between fact and fiction reflects the human condition in all its equivocal glory,” Charlotte told Bored Panda. 

And lucky for us, everyone is welcome to contribute to the museum. “Our collection is growing regularly with every traveling exhibition, but also daily since everyone can donate by filling out a contribution form on our website and by sending the object to our Zagreb address. People can also contribute virtually on our website – by pinning a place on the world map and sharing the story that marked it, or they can even time-lock their story away from themselves and entrust us with what they wrote for a chosen time.”

And as far as how the museum impacts its visitors, Charlotte says, “[They] often recognize how people are really alike in matters of love and loss. In a way, the museum offers an exchange of experience, so they no longer feel alone in both their suffering and joy. Again and again they feel moved or inspired: almost all visitors feel the need to write down their impressions of the exhibition in our guest book and sometimes even share their own intimate story.”

“Museum of Broken Relationships is an example of a contemporary contact zone that preserves individual stories from sinking into general societal processes through the live encounters, sharing that takes place between the visitors and the exhibits that represent real living people,” she went on to share. “We created the unique narrative of hybrid authorship, somewhere between the documentation of everyday life and its artistic sublimation, prying voyeurism and cultural anthropology.”

“It is a celebration of those moments when we truly meet one another no matter how painful, or difficult they might be. And if its diverse, elliptic exhibits convey something universal it is their desire to share, it is their longing to fall in love again,” Charlotte says. “The museum added unexpected cathartic rituals, personal transformation and bereavement support to the museums’ role in society and many times we have witnessed this magic happen at the museum.”