Museum Water

Slovenia is one of the few countries with abundant supplies of good-quality drinking water. Clean drinking water is our specialty. It is our prominent feature and one of the reasons why Ljubljana was named European Green Capital 2016. To mark the occasion, the Ljubljana City Museum, in collaboration with the JP Vodovod Kanalizacija Snaga public utility company, hosted an exhibition about water, which included the Museum Water project.

Museum Water is a glass bottle with a handprint made by a resident of a small village in the Nuba Mountains, where people have almost no access to drinking water. The handprint on the bottle carries a clear symbolic meaning: drinking water is a symbol of life and the essence of man's future. It emphasises the need for awareness of its preciousness and the fact that it is not abundant on our planet. The name Museum Water also suggests a paradox: if water were to become a museum exhibit, it would mean the extinction of humanity. The Museum urges us to "protect water for the future" to ensure that this does not happen. The Museum Water is an incentive to share knowledge about water. This includes water management, water resources, water pollution, the social role of water, water wars and corporate water interventions.

The Museum Water project is a collaboration between the Tomo Križnar Foundation and the Ljubljana public utility company JP VOKA SNAGA. The bottles, made at the Hrastnik Glassworks, were designed by Darko Pokorn of New Collectivism in collaboration with Tom Križnar.

In Ljubljana, natural drinking water flows from taps, so please fill your bottle with tap water the next time you want it.

Project conceptualization
Blaž Peršin, Director, Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana

Glass bottle design
Darko Pokorn, New Collectivism, Design Department of Neue Slowenische Kunst

Production
Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana, Ljubljana's largest institution in the field of culture, heritage and art, and JP VOKA SNAGA, the largest public company for drinking water supply and wastewater treatment in Slovenia.
The project was developed in collaboration with the Slovenian writer and peace activist Tom Križnar.