Museum of Broken Relationships

Balkan updates (and Milan) to follow, but first: a little note on a cool installation/museum in Zagreb (I understand they have an outpost in Los Angeles, and a pop-up version they take around the globe): The Museum of Broken Relationships. After the jump: that!

I made this my one museum stop in Zagreb, which has turned out to be maybe my favorite of the Balkan cities I visited, for reasons I'll go into in a future post.  I had heard generally positive things about the museum, and figured at $4 ($3 with a student discount!) it would be an ideal midday destination. It wasn't until I was on my way there that I realized I was dropping in on the one-year mark of my divorce hearing (an event I wasn't present at, as I'd already arranged to be abroad by the time the date was set, which suited me fine as I hadn't wanted it at any level to happen - but I digress!). It was kind of a perfect midday moment of reflection and perspective.

If you're unfamiliar: the museum was founded by a couple when they split up. Its collection consists of objects donated by people who have had relationships end: through breakups, divorce, parents leaving them, untimely death, and otherwise. The curators suggest that in donating these objects, the donors are in essence performing a rite of passage, symbolically letting go of something that holds them to the memory or the person who left. (It's a rather Marie Kondo idea, in that.)

It's a fascinating array of objects ranging from the mundane (an MP3 player, an XBox game) to the profound (a letter written from one Bosnian teenager to another that he met during an attempt to escape the violence in the 90s). They reflect relationships of all durations and qualities, and are all accompanied by a piece of writing by the donor. These in turn range from the clinical or flatly descriptive to the poetic and overblown.

The thing that emerged to me most from this was how frequently the need to frame, to justify, to reduce a relationship or its end to a narrative or a fable, was apparent. These were the captions that I found most uncomfortable, as they often felt shot through with the authors' lack of closure and with insecurity, their prolific or emphatic framings only underscoring how badly they struggled to make the relationship's end coherent, small, digestible. In contrast, some of the most powerful pieces were those offered in simple, plain words, acknowledging in a way how unknowable these moments and partings are, and how mysterious lovers become once they leave - whether that departure comes at the end of the relationship or beforehand.

In any case, it was a beautiful place to spend the middle of the day. I marked the passing of the year thinking about where I was and where I am, all that the intervening year has held, and generally took a moment for gratitude, as I've been increasingly better at doing. And then I spent the afternoon in their cafe, where like a quiet miracle, my favorite band of late Darlingside came on the radio, their song "God of Loss" an unintentionally perfect soundtrack for the day.

So, if this ever comes to you, it's worth a gander, and if you're ever in Zagreb (or LA I guess!) also worth sticking your head in for a little meditation about how loss hits us all, and how wide the range of human experiences is. The future! It gets kinder and kinder if you let it!