Museum of Water is a collection of publicly donated water that tells stories of the people and places it comes from. It is an invitation to ponder this precious liquid and how we use it.
Water is our most basic need but also our most overlooked, throwaway substance. We claim kinship with every water metaphor, yet in our actions we defend against it, squeezing and pumping, chlorinating and piping, soothed by our certainty that it will pour from our taps at a twist of our fingers.
This is a live artwork that asks us to re-examine our connection with the water that surrounds us, to develop a new relationship: to consider what is precious about it and how we are using it now in order to explore how we might care for it in the future. We are all implicated in this.
Museum of Water has travelled to over 50 different sites worldwide, been visited by over 60,000 people, and currently holds over 1,000 waters in the collection. In celebration of our access to fresh water, always running alongside the Museum is our Water Bar, a free pop-up outdoor bar serving fresh water from the nearest source.
Begun in 2013, at a time of major flooding in Britain, Museum of Water is a travelling artwork inviting discussion and pulling focus onto water. The collection holds ghost water and bad dream water, water from the last ice age, a melted snowman as well as Norwegian spit, three types of urine and two different breaths. It holds water from Lourdes, Mecca and the Ganges, Mediterranean sea from the beach of a refugee camp on Lesvos and water from an aboriginal grandmother remembering the stolen generation and the disappearing wetlands of Western Australia.
Explore our Collection online, listen to donors’ speaking about their water, keep an eye out for future events and bring your own water.
Choose what water is precious to you.
Help build a collection of water for future generations to enjoy.
What water will you keep?
