Traveling to Croatia from my home in Morocco required flights from Marrakech to Madrid to Zagreb. I was stopped by security at both Marrakech and Madrid airports, thanks to a steel horseshoe in my carry-on bag that set off the alarm. Both times, after security rummaged through my belongings and found the offending item, they paused and glanced at me, puzzled. I looked back at them blankly.
How do you explain to airport security that the horseshoe reminds you of your ex-boyfriend and that you’re traveling to Zagreb to donate it to a museum?
The idea for the Museum of Broken Relationships began in 2003, fittingly, with a breakup: Film producer Olinka Vištica and visual artist Dražen Grubišić had just ended their four-year relationship and joked about setting up a museum to showcase their leftover belongings. They decided to take things further by asking their friends to donate objects left behind from their breakups. The collection they amassed made its public debut in Zagreb in 2006, and after 63 exhibits around the world, it opened as a permanent museum inside a former palace in Zagreb’s historic Upper Town in 2010.
Today, through an open call for submissions, the crowd-sourced museum acquires objects and documents from all over the world that serve as mementos of love and loss: a Godzilla figurine given to a Mexico City man by his ex-girlfriend, an ax donated by a woman from Berlin who used it to chop up her cheating lover’s furniture, a film canister containing the ashes of a grieving Florida woman’s late husband who died from cancer.
To donate to the exhibit, one must submit a physical object (in person or by mail) and an accompanying story about their relationship, including where it happened, how long it lasted, and what the donated object represents. The Museum of Broken Relationships has received more than 3,500 donations since it first opened and has roughly 90 objects and stories on display at any given time. The exhibit changes every few years based on collective themes that emerge from people’s stories. But Vištica says the overall mission remains the same: to preserve stories of love and loss.
It’s more of a temple than a museum. It’s a shelter for love.
“It’s more of a temple than a museum. It’s a shelter for love,” she says. “We all want to believe our relationships and our pasts matter. We keep an archive that allows those stories to live on.”
Even without donating an object, visitors can leave their own mark in the museum by signing its Book of Confessions. The massive guest book is full of people’s thoughts in languages from all over the world, from Bosnian—"Nadam se da ovo nije ‘zbogom’ već ‘vidimo se kasnije’” (I hope this is not goodbye but see you later)—to Spanish, quoting novelist Julio Cortázar: “Andábamos sin buscarnos, pero sabiendo que andábamos para encontrarnos": We walked without looking for each other but knowing that we walked to find each other.
According to Grubišić, the Museum of Broken Relationships’ greatest draw is that it recognizes that the demise of a relationship is as important of a milestone to acknowledge as life’s more uplifting events.
“We already have rituals in place to celebrate when you get married or have a child,” he says. “But you break up with someone after 10 years and you get nothing. That’s a story that needs to be confronted and processed. By doing that, you open a new chapter in your life.”
Charlotte Fuentes, the collection manager and curator for the Museum of Broken Relationships, says visitors often find comfort in donating their history-laced belongings.
“These objects are precious witnesses to people’s stories,” she says. “An object itself might be useless, but it holds great value when it’s linked to someone’s story. Our job is to show people that we take their stories seriously and we care about them.”
Since the inception of the Museum of Broken Relationships, other museums taking inspiration from its format have emerged, including the Museum of Failure (2017), a traveling exhibit that showcases product ideas and services that were total flops, and the Love Stories Museum in Dubrovnik (2018), a collection of submissions and stories from real-life couples all over the world.
“It’s straightforward. There’s no need for prerequisite knowledge of art and architecture,” Grubišić says of his museum, which costs €7 (US$8) to enter. “All you need is to come in and hear the stories. I love it when people say, ‘This is the first museum I’ve ever visited where I read everything in it.’”
Museum cofounders Olinka Vištica and visual artist Dražen Grubišić; the Museum of Broken Relationships opened permanently in 2010.
Courtesy of Museum of Broken Relationships
I decided to visit the Museum of Broken Relationships this June for what would have been my 10-year anniversary, except that Friðrik and I broke up four years ago. Although time, travel, and therapy had eased my heartache over the years, I had also spent countless nights recalling my words, retracing my steps, wondering where things started to go wrong, and what I could have done differently. It was exhausting.
Like Grubišić, Miami-based therapist Alejandro Goicoechea says creating a positive framework around a breakup can prove key to moving past heartbreak. By donating an object that represents my ex to a museum, he says, I was giving my loss a sense of purpose.
“Attachment to an object or an idea fools us into thinking that nothing will ever be as good again when in fact, things are going to be better,” he says. “Letting go of that object or idea is a way of taking control of your life, of creating something new. It’s the change you need to move on.”
Still, the day I bring my horseshoe to the museum, I feel anxious. It’s a souvenir from the first day that I met Friðrik in Reykjavík, Iceland. It reminds me of our adventures together, and I wonder if keeping it would really be all that bad. But it feels too late to turn back.
The two women working at the museum’s front desk smile when I whisper that I’m there to donate something. “What’s your object?” one asks. In my nervousness pulling it out of my bag, I drop the horseshoe and the clank sounds like it’s reverberating through the entire museum.
I’m mortified, but they let out delighted squeals. “You’re going to bring us good luck!” the other woman says. I didn’t expect it, but my eyes fill with tears. Tears of sorrow. Tears of gratitude. Tears for the love and loss I’ve experienced in life and for all the love and loss still to come.
After donating the horseshoe, I have just one more thing to do. I make my way into the museum to sign the Book of Confessions. “It’s time for me to let go now,“ I write. “Thank you for everything.”
