Note to Correspondents

‘WATER’ PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBIT BEGINS AT UNITED NATIONS ON 23 OCTOBER

The United Nations is to host a photographic exhibition developed by the American Museum of Natural History in New York on the beauty and wonder of water.  With more than 50 large, colourful images, text and graphics, “Water” reveals the unique properties and characteristics of water in all its forms, and its central importance to humans and, indeed, all life on Earth.

The fascinating images transport visitors around the world -- from the gigantic water tunnel under construction beneath New York City to a fishing village floating on the largest freshwater lake in South-East Asia -- to explore one of the most pressing challenges of the twenty-first century: humanity’s sustainable management and use of the life-giving, but finite, treasure -- water.  The exhibition features a wide variety of stories and sights, including salmon swimming upstream, crops growing in the desert, Hindu women offering water to the setting sun and polar bears hunting on Arctic ice.

The exhibition will open with a formal ceremony next Tuesday, 23 October, at 6 p.m. in the Main Gallery of the General Assembly Visitors’ Lobby.  United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to make opening remarks.  Statements will also be made by Joseph Verner Reed, Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser to the Secretary-General; Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information; and Ellen V. Futter, President, the American Museum of Natural History.

This photo show heralds a new major exhibition, “Water: H₂0 = Life”, opening on 3 November at the Natural History Museum.  After that exhibition closes on 26 May 2008, it will travel to venues in Canada, Asia and South America.  Live animals, hands-on exhibits and immense dioramas invite the whole family to explore the amazing properties of water and reveal the challenges to protecting Earth’s most precious life-giving resource.

“Water” was made possible with the sponsorship of the American Museum of Natural History, in cooperation with the United Nations Department of Public Information.  For more information on United Nations exhibitions, please contact Jan Arnesen at tel.: 212 963 8531 or arnesen@un.org; or Liza Wichmann at tel.: 212 963 0089 or wichmann@un.org.

* *** *

For information media • not an official record