There’s a gentle hum blanketing the vast white room. It feels like both a vacuum and an abundance at once. There are at least 40 objects on display at The Mine Factory in North Point Breeze, but nothing seems to take up much room.
Acupuncture pens, dreadlocks, an empty bottle of whiskey and even a slab of concrete rest under the warm white lights above. The artifacts are eerie here.
“The people who began the exhibit asked that we keep it silent so people would really focus on the narratives,” said Jane Bernstein, the Carnegie Mellon University English professor who made the Pittsburgh iteration of the Museum of Broken Relationships possible.
The exhibit combines crowdsourced, community-donated objects that represent some aspect of a fractured relationship and accompanying short stories that add context to the typically mundane pieces. Each donation remains anonymous. Seventy percent of the items are from Pittsburgh and the rest collected from around the world.
Surrounded by vacant and dilapidated buildings, the exhibit space hints at Pittsburgh’s own fraught relationship with industry and decline.
“From the start, I’d hoped the exhibit would be in a former mill building or factory,” said Ms. Bernstein, who visited the original display in Zagreb, Croatia. “I felt that would give the show an important link to Pittsburgh’s history.”
The museum is the brainchild of Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisic, two ex-lovers who couldn’t decide which of them should keep a toy bunny that was central to their relationship. So they started a museum with it.
While Ms. Bernstein expected the largely narrative-driven museum to be quirky, she was surprised how it affected her.
“I was moved by the stories and objects on display — touched, amused, puzzled,” she said. “I loved that it unearthed so much in me.”
Ms. Bernstein is the 38th person to bring the exhibit home with her. The other exhibitions have been in places as disparate as Singapore and Cape Town, South Africa. The museum’s other permanent site is in Los Angeles. Pittsburgh’s exhibit is the only one completely curated and designed by students.
Sarabeth Boak, a graduate student at CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center, served as the exhibition producer, creating original interactive pieces for the final space, including a digitized typewriter that allows visitors to share their own breakup stories.
Objects are arranged in zones that correspond to a larger emotional theme, according to Ms. Boak. They range from heartbreaking to sarcastic to hilarious.
“If you move through the space counterclockwise, you have an emotional arc that ranges from lighthearted to sad, to bitter, to romantic or hopeful,” Ms. Boak explained. “If you go clockwise, you will have a similar emotional journey.”
At the front of the room, a bottle of Evan Williams Peach whiskey rests on a white pallet. Beneath lies a story of two lovers who met at a mental health center in Pittsburgh. The whiskey was the last thing they shared before the woman who submitted it saw her beau for the last time. The last line reads:
“It was the night that I realized I was in love with him, and the night that I became pregnant with our baby.”
Some of the objects possess poetic insights on life, such as a concrete slab representing two Pittsburgh lovers who attempted to fix a piece of sidewalk outside their home. The couple failed and one year later discovered that their patch job, initials included, had been upended by a city work crew. A selection of the story reads:
“That’s the thing about initials in concrete ... They’re really just an idea of a thing. The slightest disruption and they’re lost.”
When the exhibit ends Dec. 29, the objects will be added to the greater museum’s archive in Croatia, which already features about 2,500 items, according to Ms. Bernstein. The Pittsburgh objects may see the light of day again at another exhibition or be featured on www.brokenships.com. Either way, the process is cathartic for the donor.
“Other people’s stories bring us together. They make us feel less alone, more part of a human community,” Ms. Bernstein said.
Museum of Broken Relationships continues at The Mine Factory, 201 N. Braddock Ave., 15208 through Dec. 29. Hours are 5-9 p.m. Fridays, noon-9 p.m. Saturdays and noon-6 p.m. Sundays. Admission is free. For more information, visit www.Brokenships.com.
Courtney Linder: clinder@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1707. Twitter: @LinderPG.
First Published: December 10, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
