An empty bottle of whiskey, a pair of fake breasts, a pair of tattered blue jeans, a toaster, an axe, and a stack of Brazilian Playboy magazines. These are some of the artifacts displayed at the Museum of Broken Relationships, a project that collects and displays the wreckage of failed romantic exploits. The museum has two locations—the original at Zagreb, Croatia, and a second establishment opened in Los Angeles, the US, about a year ago.

The Museum was the brainchild of Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisic, two Croatian artists who fell out of love and couldn’t decide what they should do with the leftover items they had acquired during their four year relationship. They joked about starting a museum but didn’t thought about it seriously, until three years later, when Grubisic contacted Vistica with the idea in earnest. They asked their friends to donate items left behind from their break-ups and a collection was born.

Photo credit: Connie Ma/Flickr