Exciting news: this year IUPUI Museum Studies is partnering with the Museum of Broken Relationships and members of our local communities to create The Museum of Broken Relationships Indianapolis, an interdisciplinary project featuring an exhibition and related public programs that will open at the Herron Galleries at IUPUI and at sites around Indianapolis in early 2023.
What is the Museum of Broken Relationships (MBR)?
It is a global, crowd-sourced project that gathers anonymous donations and stories of experience with love and loss from around the world. While MBR has a brick-and-mortar museum in Zagreb, Croatia, MBR’s co-founders Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubištič regularly travel to places around the world to create community-based, local exhibitions that each blend community donations and themes with those from other countries in thought-provoking ways. Each exhibition becomes a unique exploration of love, loss, and growth by merging individual, communal, and universal perspectives.
A Collaborative Project
Museum Studies faculty members Lois H. Silverman and Laura M. Holzman are leading the team of students, community partners, and IUPUI faculty and staff who will be contributing to The Museum of Broken Relationships Indianapolis. This collaboration builds on Dr. Silverman’s long-standing work with MBR, begun through The Social Work of Museums (Routledge 2010), and her course-based partnership with MBR last fall. It fits beautifully with the collaborative, applied, and community-engaged approaches that are at the heart of our Museum Studies Program. We’re able to develop this multi-layered project thanks to generous support from Edgar and Dorothy Fehnel, Herron Galleries, and the IUPUI Center for Service and Learning.
This fall, students in Dr. Silverman’s Museum Education course will be developing public programs that will unfold during the spring semester. Students in Dr. Holzman’s Curatorial Practices course will help gather objects and stories from communities across Indianapolis and they’ll develop related materials for the spring exhibition. As part of our commitment to public scholarship, students will be sharing and reflecting on the work in a series of blog posts. Stay tuned for updates as the project unfolds!
