This past week, Ariana and I decided to head to the Museum of Broken Relationships. For those who have never seen The Bachelor, or haven’t heard the little mentions of this quirky museum, the Museum of Broken Relationships holds submissions from people of relationships they’ve had that ended. The museum itself doesn’t only hold mementos from romantic relationships between people, though that does make up most of the museum’s contents, but rather also includes familial relationships, relationships with a past self, and relationships with a dream that never lasted.
Personally, I had first heard of the Museum of Broken Relationships from a coworker who had submitted an item. As an artist, someone in his community mentioned that this museum was being made, so he figured he’d submit something: a tiny piece of paper an ex-girlfriend had given him while he worked on his art that read “Pay Attention to me.” To see this in the museum in person was somewhat surreal, and I found myself pulling out my phone to snapchat a picture of the scrap of paper to all of my coworkers.
As I walked around the museum, looking from artifact to artifact, I noticed lots of people on their phones, taking pictures of the artifacts they related to, or found funny, or just felt like documenting. Some people snapchatted themselves at the museum, a sign of their pop culture relevance to signal to their friends. Even Ariana and I snapchatted the Bachelor’s Last Rose, because we knew that our friends would find it cool.
Around the museum, this idea of using social media as part of the museum experience was everywhere. I could tell it was part of their money-making strategy, perhaps from my natural business mentality. The more visitors use social media to promote the museum, the less paid marketing the museum has to do, and the more people that come to pay the fee to enter. The museum listed their handles on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr on signs throughout the building. Then, upstairs, they had little stories on cards about ended relationships that visitors had submitted. At the bottom of each card, it listed “Instagram Handle:” so people could write theirs and maybe others would follow them. To me, this removed the anonymity of the cards and the stories they held, but also oddly made the writers of the card be defined by their Instagrams. If someone were to look them up, they would see their Instagram, an aesthetically-curated version of themselves. I thought the inclusion of the Instagram Handle was an odd and fascinating choice.
In this day and age, it is clear that museums rely on word of mouth and social media marketing to ensure attendance.
This sounds like a very interesting take on a museum. It seems to really draw on the visitor’s emotions and connect to them on a deeper level by relating to some of the heartbreaks they may have gone through that are being represented in the museum. I think it is a nice gesture for the museum to sort of make these things public and relatable to make the visitors realize that they are not alone in their struggles, others are facing the same sorrows.
This is definitely a very cute, modern idea for a museum. I feel like most museums aren’t as blatant about their social media presence, but this one really tries to cultivate that experience. It seems to cater especially to our technology and phone-crazed generation. I also understand and agree with your assessment about how the Museum of Broken Relationships is using social media as a major source for marketing! It’s very clever, and a spin on what a traditional museum feels like, for sure.
I also visited this museum a while back, but didn’t notice the cards for visitors to leave their stories and Instagram handles on. I did see a notebook that visitors could leave their stories and confessions anonymously, which was a nice touch to the exhibit. I think this balance between anonymity and the choice to leave a public presence creates a very integrative dynamic, in the sense that visitors can relate to the experiences even more so because they know others – perhaps in the same room as them – have gone through similar ones. I found out about the museum through social media, as you mentioned, which is definitely a huge factor of the museum’s popularity because the name itself is relatable to the masses.
I had no idea this museum existed. It seems like a unique idea. As you mentioned, I think you’re right that this museum encourages the use of social media to promote and market the museum. It is definitely a brilliant strategy as social media is so widely used. People would just go to this museum to show their friends all the interesting, funny, weird things it has to offer.
I also have had the pleasure of visiting the Museum of Broken Relationships, and I wholeheartedly agree with you that the presence of social media is heavily engrained in the museum; from the artifacts themselves to the marketability of one’s attendance at this location, social media has a heavy hand in making this one of the most modern and relatable museums that I’ve visited as of late. I also found myself wondering if the social media aspect would make this museum less relatable for adults who maybe did not grow up with the level of social media engagement that we did, and if so, what was their viewpoint on the museum as a whole?