If you're in the mood for a bitterly poignant, variously amusing, and, at times, affectingly sad art exhibition, sweep your stringy black emo bangs out of your eyes and check out the (massively overpriced, it must be said) Museum of Broken Relationships exhibition currently on show down at (possibly future?) complex of crushed dreams, Columbia Circle. Coming to us from Zagreb, Croatia, where it's on display year round, The Museum of Broken Relationships is a collection of donated (or variously furiously discarded) artifacts from relationships out there in the world that have ended. Objects (symbols, metaphors, signifiers) of love, devotion, hope, passion, yearning, and fidelity are on display on white podiums, accompanied by short documentation written by their donators explaining their significance. Look. This is a vial of someones tears! Oh, the heartbreak! Of course, a stuffed animal... Matching hers and hers braziers. A random doodle. A specific brand of candy deployed during a couple's courtship phase. Momentos from a European vacation that ended in the couple going their separate ways. The "T" off someone's keyboard. A long distance relationships that didn't work out. Alas, those rarely do... The spectrum of a star. A truly fantastic gift one astronomer gave another. How did THAT not work out? This one's pretty self-explanatory. *SOB* Some guy's dreds. She did you a favor, my friend! A sea turtle pendent. Evidently, this relationship ended when its recipient discovered the exact same pendent adorning the neck of the wife of the person that gave it to them. Now THAT'S tragic. So yeah, it's exactly this. Objects from all over the world -- Russia, Iran, China, America, Germany, Sweden, Kenya, Croatia -- like a World Cup of misery -- existing on as symbols of love gone bad. It's sad. It's funny. It's painful. It shows the humor in sadness and pain. It shows the sadness and pain in sadness and pain. And it says something about the universality of heartbreak, or whatever. And maybe something about the human capacity to imbue meaningless objects with the most significant meaning. The documentation with the items, in both English and Chinese, paints a portrait of these moments of heartbreak and places these random items in context of larger narratives. Sometimes... the items really only need minimal exposition. *** 'The Museum of Broken Relationships' is on until August 1 at Columbia Circle. 90rmb on weekdays, 120rmb on weekends. Yeah, that entry fee breaks our heart as well...