The Blue Planet’s Lifeblood: A Finite Flow

It is impossible to enter “Water: H2O = Life,” the exhibition opening tomorrow at the American Museum of Natural History, and not feel excitement at its possibilities. You walk into darkened space where a tumbling aqua-lighted waterfall seems to descend from the ceiling; letters projected on its turbulent surface spell “water” in multiple languages.
This is affecting and clever because the seeming cascade really is formed of water in its vaporous state. And you cannot pass through that curtain of mist without taking some notice of water’s extraordinary qualities: Like few other substances on earth, the show points out, water can exist as a solid, liquid and gas at everyday temperatures and pressures.

By the projected words you are also quickly made aware of water’s power to flow beyond national boundaries. The exhibition — created by Eleanor Sterling, director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the museum, in conjunction with the Science Museum of Minnesota and other science museums — is also meant to have a global reach. It will travel to South America, Asia, Australia and other locations in North America. Its objects include a meteorite from Australia (containing 15 percent water), live Southeast Asian mudskippers (fish that carry water in their bodies as they slither onto land) , a pipe fragment from Mexico used to irrigate fields some 1,500 years ago, and a display devoted to the environmental impact of the Three Gorges Dam in China, the world’s largest concrete structure. And given the exhibition’s concerns with environmental education, there is also much here that will attract younger visitors, who may not always be prepared for immersion into the watery realm of environmental debate.

But the exhibition also inspires considerable frustration. It presents a free-flowing flood of data and has an overly insistent and predictable message. That message is, admittedly, a virtuous one, because water, the exhibition points out, is not a renewable resource. What exists on earth now is the only water we will ever have, and less than 1 percent of it is available for human use. In 27 countries, most in Asia and Africa, convenient water is unavailable to half the population; meanwhile many rivers there are polluted with sludge, and even the Ganges, the sacred river of India, harbors harmful waste.

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