Museum of Broken Relationships
Donated objects and anonymous stories from ended relationships, shown in the baroque Kulmer Palace.
The museum grew out of a travelling art project begun in 2006 by Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić, who invited people to donate an object left over from a failed relationship together with an anonymous written account of it. After touring widely the collection found a permanent home in 2010 in the baroque Kulmer Palace on the Upper Town, a short walk from St Mark's Square. In 2011 the museum received the Kenneth Hudson Award of the European Museum Forum for the most innovative museum in Europe.
The display pairs ordinary objects, from a garden axe and a wedding dress to toys, letters and prosthetic items, with short first-person captions giving the place and duration of the relationship. Donations continue to arrive from around the world, so the selection on show is rotated, and parts of the collection travel as temporary exhibitions. Captions are in Croatian and English, with translation booklets in several other languages, and the building also contains a café and shop.
Highlights
- Anonymous donated objects paired with first-person break-up stories
- Housed in the baroque Kulmer Palace on the Upper Town
- Kenneth Hudson Award for innovation, received in 2011
- Rotating display drawn from donations sent worldwide
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