The Museum of Broken Relationships, a meeting place for broken hearts

By Éric Troncy.

A stuffed rabbit as the origin of the museum

When film producer Olinka Vištica (born in 1969) and sculptor Dražen Grubišic brought their four-year relationship to an end in 2003, a question arose… Who would keep the stuffed rabbit? Over the years it had ceased to be just any stuffed rabbit and had become their stuffed rabbit. Its fate, however, was no longer clear.

The Croatian ex-lovers eventually find an answer three years later and created a museum. Nowadays, opening a museum has almost become commonplace and a ready-made answer to many questions. Isn’t it rather delightful that the same space houses bot Leonardo da Vinci masterpieces and boxes of camembert?

“[It is] a kind of public archive of broken relationships.” – Olinka Vištica

The museum we’re talking about here is unique. It is devoted to “broken relationships”, a universal, deeply relatable theme, and therefore to the objects that love stories leave behind. “Each one becomes a silent witness of happier, better times. Silent, yet filled with meaning. Even the most ordinary object has a story to tell,” Vištica explains. The latter envisions it as “a metaphorical space where we would send objects after a breakup, a sort of public archive of broken relationships. A way of ending a union and moving on, while protecting its memory. Almost like a guarantee that this love really existed.” After all, “there is no future without a past.”

A coffee maker, a parachute, an axe, a positive pregnancy test, handcuffs, dreadlocks… Over 3,500 objects in all now coexist under the same roof. Assembling the first collection was an easy task. The two former lovers started asking close friends to entrust them with an object that bore the scars of their own failed relationships. Today the collection grows through careful selection among the countless items sent from nearly every part of the globe. What counts is the object and the story that goes with it. Indeed, visitors are meant to take a deep dive into the story behind these relics.

Parachute, axe, handcuffs… The Museum of Broken Relationships collection

The parachute, for instance, leads us to the story of its donor, a Finnish woman whose partner died during a jump. Meanwhile, the awe was donated by a young woman who, after being cheated on, used that very object to chop her unfaithful partner’s furniture into pieces. Although the Museum of Broken Relationships is now located in a former 17th-century palace in Zagreb, it began its journey as a traveling exhibition.

Its first appearance at the Glyptotheque of Zagreb in 2006 was followed by stops in Germany, Bosnia, Turkey, Great Britain, Slovenia and the United States. The idea of giving the museum a permanent home failed to win over the Croatian Ministry of Culture. So, Vištica and Grubišic eventually purchased a 300 m² space in Zagreb, which they inaugurated on October 5th, 2010.

A year after its opening, the museum received the Kenneth Hudson Award at the European Museum of the Year competition. This prize recognises “a museum, person, project or collective behind the most unusual, daring, and possibly even controversial achievement that challenges conventional perceptions of the role of museums in society.”

Museum of Broken Relationships, Ćirilometodska ul. 2, 10000, Zagreb, Croatia.