The Los Angeles Museum of Broken Relationships officially opens its doors today, and the creative minds behind it have been digging into the sorrowful past of its Hollywood Boulevard site. The sister location to a museum in Croatia with the same name, the Museum of Broken Relationships is filled with artifacts of lost love. In keeping with that theme, the museum has released a short video documenting the surrounding area's evolution from the home of golden age Hollywood to a sleazy strip of porn houses to the invariably disappointing tourist destination that it is today.
As the video points out, the museum's location is adjacent to the site of the once-great Hollywood Hotel, now cleared away to make room for the sprawling (and ugly) Hollywood and Highland complex. Across the street are what remains of the Vogue and Iris theaters where moviegoers flocked decades ago. The video also acknowledges the ironic fact that the museum is opening in the storefront that was most recently home to Frederick's of Hollywood. As the narrator suggests, the lingerie store becoming a museum dedicated to romantic failures "could, in itself, be seen as a case of cause and effect."