Museum in Vancouver puts personal failures on display, encouraging people to move on

VANCOUVER — A dead aloe plant, an old wedding dress that symbolized a failed marriage and a rejection letter for a job application are all exhibits that are part of a display of personal failure at a Vancouver mall.

Eyvan Collins, curator of the Museum of Personal Failure, says he started putting up posters online last year, inviting people to submit items representing their failures as a way for him to cope with “big heartbreak” after two of his relationships ended.

Collins says people started submitting all kinds of items, which were enough to host an exhibition.

Jennifer Campbell, who is Collins’s mother, submitted the wedding dress, which is more than 30 years old.

Campbell says failed marriages are a difficult thing to go through, but now she has placed the dress in a moving box, meaning that it’s over and she has moved on.

The Museum of Personal Failure exhibition will run until Feb. 3 at Kingsgate Mall in Vancouver, allowing people to have a space to explore failures and hopefully finds hopes.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 25, 2026.