Museum of broken relationships

The Museum of Broken Relationships is dedicated to broken hearts. Authors of the concept Olinka Vištica and Drazen Grubišić decided to set up the museum after consoling friends over their failed romances.

It has been eons since my heart was broken; so far Mr. Nag hasn't discovered that this relationship has a back door. I still remember the pain of my first and only heartbreak though. I wish I had a broken gnome to show for it but alas I am left with just a distant ache.

The divorce day garden dwarf. He arrived in a new car. Arrogant, shallow and heartless. The dwarf was closing the gate that he had destroyed himself some time ago. At that moment it flew over to the windscreen of the new car, rebounded and landed on the asphalt surface. It was a long loop, drawing an arc of time – and this short long arc defined the end of love.

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Museum of Broken Relationships

A Box made of Matches
1973-2000
Maribor, Slovenia

A box – Jelka, Vlado, November 15, 1975. Vlado made it after the wedding, when he was in the army. After 18 years of marriage he left me for another woman; we officially divorced after our 25th wedding anniversary. I decided to surprise him for the anniversary. I ordered a cake with the number 25 written on it and the pastry shop cut it in half. I sent him the half with the 25. Our sons celebrated our anniversary first with me and then with their father. He and his girlfriend were very shocked but they ate the cake anyway. The cake is gone and so is our marriage. I still have the box, two sons and a lot of memories…

Museum of Broken Relationships
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'The Memory Of Mankind'

If you add up the attendance for every major-league baseball, basketball, football and hockey game this year, the combined total will come to about 140 million people. That's a big number, but it's barely a fraction of the number of people who will visit American museums this year.Museums are big business, attracting billions of tourist dollars, advancing science, and educating and amusing more than 850 million people annually.

Read more at NPR's A History Of Museums, 'The Memory Of Mankind'

Schoolchildren visiting New York's Junior Museum of the Metropolitan Museum of Art watch slides of artists at work in the 1950s. Carsten/Three Lions/Getty Image

Do You Realize

Video by: digitaldawn55. Inspired by Urban Light, Chris Burden's landmark installation of 202 vintage street lamps, which joined LACMA's collection in February 2008.
Via Artdaily.org

Europeana

Europeana is a project that showcases European history, literature, arts and science. Three million cultural items – images, texts, sounds and videos went online in an ambitious launch. A little too ambitious it seems as the site crashed after receiving 10 million hits per hour. I'm looking forward to exploring it when it returns in mid-December.

Cabinets of curiosities

This article by K. Fred explains Curiosity Cabinets:

The first museums were collections privately held. These collections were started during the 16th and 17th centuries. They were usually named Curiosity Cabinets in the English speaking countries. Though other names were used such as, Cabinet's of Wonders, Wunder-kammer, Rariteitenkabinett, and Chamber's of Curiosities. These collections usually were divided into three segments. Natural, artificial, and scientific. The collectors could be found from the Pope to a local Tavern with the most spectacular ones largely owned by the wealthy.

Phantasmaphile provides some examples of curious museums that you can visit like the weirdly lovely Necromance in Los Angeles.

Thanks for directing me to this, John.

The Soul of Soles

Stuttgart is an ironic home for Europe's only skateboard museum. Car-obsessed Stuttgart is known as the 'cradle of the automobile' and counts the Porsche and Mercedes-Benz museums among its many cultural attractions. The luxury and refined elegance of said automobiles starkly contrast with the inevitable sweat, dirt and blood familiar to all skaters. Yet, neighbors they are.

See more at Been-Seen

Vodka Museum

Being a highly cultured Nag I love to visit museums when I travel. The Vodka Museum looks like it's right up my alley. What is that creature? A snake? Everyone knows that there's nothing a snake likes better than a shot of vodka - it keeps the venom flowing.

Best viewed through a vapour of smoke

Le Musee du Fumeur in Paris is one I've never visited. I think I'll hit it next time I'm there.

For the first time, a free and permanent exhibit, set in a welcoming Parisian venue, gathers objects commonly used by smokers in different places or times, live plants and works of art revolving around smoking, a practice common to every continent.

Via DesignObserver