The Museum of Broken Relationships is a museum in Zagreb founded by Croatian artists Olinka Vistina and Drazen Grubisic. When their relationship broke up, they could not part with the memories of their broken love and opened the museum to give the memorabilia a place. Today, their museum receives submissions from all over the world, goes to travelling exhibitions and has a branch in Los Angeles.

Soon people were sending their memorabilia to the museum. The lonely feeling of heartbreak is a universal one and visitors from all over the world have come as well as submissions from the abandoned. Today the museum goes on touring exhibition and has a branch in Los Angeles. Alethea had the honour of an interview with Charlotte Fuentes, the collection manager at the main museum in Zagreb.

16. February 2022

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Name: Charlotte Fuentes

Occupation: Collection manager at the main museum in Zagreb

Location: Zagreb

"The Museum shows how something creative and inspiring can emerge from such a painful and heartbreaking experience and give a chance for everyone to do something about it - to be creative in order to recover from that pain."

You get symbolic possessions sent to you from all over the world. How do you decide which to come to the exhibition?

Guided by our own feeling for the stories while always aware of the fact that the exhibits are multifaceted, we curate in a way to create a balanced selection of stories. It is important to show the diversity of our collection and to illustrate the vastness of the term “Relationships“.

Today our collection counts 3047 donations and keep growing so it gives us a lot of possibilities to create unique exhibitions (permanent and travelling ones).

Do people sometimes come and want their things back?

Even though our policy states that the objects are non-returnable, a few times the contributors to the Museum asked us to give them back their donations after they had realised that they would actually like to keep them. They had good reasons to ask their objects back so, of course, we agreed to give them back. But this is happening very rarely as in general most of the contributors don´t ever want to hear about their objects that remind them of their past relationships. (Even if I think it is only a facade because if they make the step to send it to the Museum it is actually because it meant a lot to them so they want it to stay alive, it is a way to keep alive this thing that doesn´t exist anymore).

Do you think it is beneficial for the donors to give you their memories?

In everyday life, it seems essential to give a creative mould to the emotion as it is a way to express and to give material shapes to something normally abstract to be finally able to share. 

The Museum shows how something creative and inspiring can emerge from such a painful and heartbreaking experience and give a chance for everyone to do something about it - to be creative in order to recover from that pain. It offers an opportunity to get rid of the emotional burden and the universal context of similar experiences helps convalescence and well-being.

We don´t think people want to erase their memories. Good or bad, they are part of who we are. That´s why the Museum is important, it gives a place for all these memories that we don´t want to think about but don´t want to forget either. The museum honours solitude, sadness, melancholia as something valuable that makes us human, something that makes us grow. There is a cathartic dimension to that for sure.

"Most of the time we are blind in the moment of breaking up, simply because it is a lot of emotions to process, a lot of things that we are gonna lose and gain."

Is there also psychological help in the museum?

An object itself has a meaning and impact only on a person involved – to an anonymous visitor it is just a trivial everyday object with no particular meaning. Stories make objects alive – they enable the visitor to have an intimate conversation with a complete stranger who donated the object to the museum. The museum’s function is not to try and document love’s end in a scientific manner as if it were to be part of some greater research. 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.

People find comfort in knowing that we all go through the same rollercoaster of emotions when it comes to love. So, even though there is no psychological help in the Museum, but the experience of the visit itself can be. Reading stories from strangers often create a conversation with oneself.

What has been your best experience in the museum?

Hard to pick one! Every meeting with new people made possible thanks to the Museum. 

Once we received a contribution from a man from England that just had lost his wife from a long sickness. I cried and laugh so much while reading his letter, it was full of love. A few months later we had a travelling exhibition planned in England so I contacted him to let him know we would exhibit his contribution. He made the trip to the exhibition and we met in person, he shared his story with me and this was the kind of powerful moment that is impossible to describe with words.

" Finding is losing something else. I think about, perhaps even mourn, what I lost to find this."

What advice do you yourself give to people who unfortunately have to part?

My friends love to call me when they broke up and I think it is exactly because I don´t give any advice to them. I think relationships are linked to our inner self and whatever you would say to someone the person will always act following what she thinks is right and I think it is the right way to do it. Most of the time we are blind in the moment of breaking up, simply because it is a lot of emotions to process, a lot of things that we are gonna lose and gain. It is a change and a change always make us feel insecure. Only time bring us clarity about what happened and shows us it was the right thing.

It makes me think of this sentence by my favourite writer Richard Brautigan: 'Finding is losing something else. I think about, perhaps even mourn, what I lost to find this."

Anyway, it is pretty hard to give some advice about something we are not a part of. I think every failure, every success in our relationships are worth being lived because they make us understand more about the mystery, and beauty, of what is Love.

Museum of Broken Relationships

www.brokenships.com

Ćirilometodska 2, 10000, Zagreb

© A can of love incense by Ana Opali

© Deljko Cur