{"id":8026,"date":"2017-04-27T00:47:35","date_gmt":"2017-04-27T00:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/media.am\/new-life-for-broken-relationships-crowdsourced-museum-about-you-about-us\/"},"modified":"2017-04-27T00:47:35","modified_gmt":"2017-04-27T00:47:35","slug":"new-life-for-broken-relationships-crowdsourced-museum-about-you-about-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/critique\/2017\/04\/27\/8026\/","title":{"rendered":"New Life for Broken Relationships: Crowdsourced Museum About You, About Us"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cI am a 70-year-old woman from Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. I visited Zagreb back in 1967 and the city is very close to my heart. When I found out from a local newspaper that there exists the Museum of Broken Relationships, I was sad and happy at the same time. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a postcard that was inserted through the slit of my door a long time ago by our neighbours\u2019 son. He had been in love with me for three years. Following the old Armenian tradition, his parents came to our home to ask for my hand. My parents refused saying that their son did not deserve me. They left angry and very disappointed. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe same evening their son drove his car off a cliff\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"Yerevan<\/p>\n

This<\/a> is one of a hundred love stories that can be found in the Museum of Broken Relationships<\/a> in Zagreb. This museum founded in Croatia\u2019s capital is a unique art project, which exists from crowdsourcing the artifacts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a museum about you, about us, about the ways we love and lose,\u201d reads the description<\/a> about the museum.<\/p>\n

People of all ages from different countries around the world send their stories of broken romantic relationships and objects associated with them that they want to get rid of but are unable to throw away.<\/p>\n

The museum offers the chance to overcome grief and loss through creativity \u2014 by contributing an item to its universal collection and sharing your personal story with others in the same situation.<\/p>\n

The idea of a museum of broken relationships emerged from the founders\u2019 personal experience. Film producer Olinka Vi\u0161tica and artist Dra\u017een Grubi\u0161i\u0107 broke up after being together for four years and, not knowing what to do with the items \u201caccumulated\u201d during their relationship, decided to establish a museum.<\/p>\n

\"Toy<\/p>\n

But the Museum of Broken Relationships today is not only about heterosexual or gay couples: here you can find stories about a daughter who lost her father, or a mother who lost her children; basically, any relationship that has left an emotional mark. And the objects often have only an emotional value, say, an empty shampoo bottle from a hotel, a bouquet made of paper, or a court ruling convicting a rapist. <\/p>\n

Among the approximately 100 objects housed in the museum\u2019s six small rooms are also valuable items: a guitar, wedding dress, pendant, internet modem, ax. By the way, the ax<\/a> is the most extraordinary item the museum has received. It was used for therapeutic purposes: to every day axe one piece of the furniture of the girlfriend who left her partner for another woman.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s important is not the object, but the story behind it. This is the principle that guides the museum staff when displaying the symbols of relationships in the gallery. If the object is interesting but the story is not (or is incomplete), the objects occupy space not in the exhibit hall, but in the museum\u2019s storage, where there are already about 2,000 artifacts. <\/p>\n

All the objects are displayed anonymously; only the contributor\u2019s place of residence and duration of the relationship, from one day to decades, is noted. The majority of the objects donated to the museum are from Mexico, and 65% of the contributors are women. The objects are collected during travelling exhibits in different cities around the world or sent by postal mail. <\/p>\n

Besides the travelling exhibits and the main collection in Zagreb, there\u2019s also a branch of the Museum of Broken Relationships, which opened a year ago in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think [people] should see [the exhibit]. If you are in a happy relationship, you’ll feel even better about it. If you’re in a broken one, you’ll see that you’re really not alone, that it’s something everybody went through,\u201d says<\/a> Dra\u017een Grubi\u0161i\u0107.<\/p>\n

Anna Barseghyan<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI am a 70-year-old woman from Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. I visited Zagreb back in 1967 and the city is very close to my heart. When I found out from a local newspaper that there exists the Museum of Broken Relationships, I was sad and happy at the same time.  \u201cThis is a postcard Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-critique","author_posts-anna-barseghyan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}