Museum of Broken Relationships
February 4 - March 3, 2016
The Museum of Broken Relationships grew from a traveling exhibition revolving around the concept of failed relationships and their ruins. Unlike ‘destructive’ self-help instructions for recovery from grief and loss, the Museum offers the chance to overcome an emotional collapse through creation: by contributing to the Museum's collection.
Whatever the motivation for donating personal belongings – be it sheer exhibitionism, therapeutic relief, or simple curiosity – people embraced the idea of exhibiting their emotional legacy as a sort of ritual, a solemn ceremony. Our societies oblige us with marriages, funerals, and even graduation farewells, but deny us any formal recognition of the demise of a relationship, despite its strong emotional effect. In the words of Roland Barthes in A Lover's Discourse: “Every passion, ultimately, has its spectator... (there is) no amorous
oblation without a final theatre.”
Conceptualized in Croatia in 2006 by Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić, the Museum has since toured internationally, holding 37 exhibitions in 25 countries, simultaneously creating an ever evolving, community built collection that challenges our ideas about heritage. The objects and stories exhibited at MING portray a selection representative of the collection, twenty times the size including the objects that have been donated in Boise. Although colored by personal experience, local culture and history, the exhibits presented here form universal patterns waiting for us to discover them and thus feel the comfort they can bring.
People and objects likewise can never be completely forgotten or discarded. Even the exiled do have a land and a language to tell their stories. And if these diverse, elliptic narratives convey something universal about their tellers, it is the determination to step out of isolation, the desire to share, the longing to fall in love again.
We would like to thank all anonymous memory holders whose bygone loves have made this museum possible. brokenships.com
February 4 - March 3, 2016
The Museum of Broken Relationships grew from a traveling exhibition revolving around the concept of failed relationships and their ruins. Unlike ‘destructive’ self-help instructions for recovery from grief and loss, the Museum offers the chance to overcome an emotional collapse through creation: by contributing to the Museum's collection.
Whatever the motivation for donating personal belongings – be it sheer exhibitionism, therapeutic relief, or simple curiosity – people embraced the idea of exhibiting their emotional legacy as a sort of ritual, a solemn ceremony. Our societies oblige us with marriages, funerals, and even graduation farewells, but deny us any formal recognition of the demise of a relationship, despite its strong emotional effect. In the words of Roland Barthes in A Lover's Discourse: “Every passion, ultimately, has its spectator... (there is) no amorous
oblation without a final theatre.”
Conceptualized in Croatia in 2006 by Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić, the Museum has since toured internationally, holding 37 exhibitions in 25 countries, simultaneously creating an ever evolving, community built collection that challenges our ideas about heritage. The objects and stories exhibited at MING portray a selection representative of the collection, twenty times the size including the objects that have been donated in Boise. Although colored by personal experience, local culture and history, the exhibits presented here form universal patterns waiting for us to discover them and thus feel the comfort they can bring.
People and objects likewise can never be completely forgotten or discarded. Even the exiled do have a land and a language to tell their stories. And if these diverse, elliptic narratives convey something universal about their tellers, it is the determination to step out of isolation, the desire to share, the longing to fall in love again.
We would like to thank all anonymous memory holders whose bygone loves have made this museum possible. brokenships.com
