Pope Leo XIV Makes a Splash for His 71st Birthday, Announcing a Water-Themed Art Exhibition at the Vatican Library

Pope Leo XIV marked his 71st birthday this week by unveiling a new Vatican Apostolic Library exhibition that turns to water as both a subject and a warning. Titled AQVA: Catastrophe and Wonder, the Rome show will mix contemporary art with rare material from the library’s collections, examining water’s capacity to sustain life while also causing ruin. Its announcement gives the library a public-facing cultural project built around an element that can be indispensable, unpredictable and destructive in equal measure.

Visitors will be able to see the exhibition from September 25 until May 14. The display includes work by three living artists alongside historical books and documents. Among the contemporary pieces are sculptural works and fish forms assembled from typographic components. The older objects include early writings on water and cookbooks with international historical connections, placing practical knowledge, food and visual art in the same conversation about a resource that has shaped daily life across eras.

One of the exhibition’s most conspicuous interventions is already visible outside the institution. French artist JR’s Dilivium extends across the library facade for about 230 feet, transforming the exterior into part of the project rather than leaving the exhibition entirely indoors. The scale of the work makes the show legible from the street, while its placement connects the library’s physical building to a program concerned with water’s force and reach.

AQVA also launches a longer institutional experiment. It is the first installment in a five-year sequence called Catastrophe and Wonder, which will consider dangers that manuscripts and books have faced over time. Future attention in the series is expected to include damage associated with fire, exposure to light, insects and people. By beginning with water, the library frames a familiar environmental hazard as one chapter in the broader vulnerability of written culture.

The series is not presented solely as an account of loss. In its description of the program, the Vatican Apostolic Library says it wants audiences to move past fear and find fresh possibilities for interpretation and artistic work. That ambition gives the exhibition a dual task: it acknowledges the fragility of collections while asking what new meanings can emerge when historic texts encounter contemporary artists. The result is designed as a meeting point between preservation and creative response, rather than a conventional display of treasures behind glass.

The location matters to that goal. The library holds materials that can be studied through digitization and online access, and Pope Leo XIV recognized the value of those routes for research. But he argued that remote access should not replace a trip to the institution itself. In the pope’s view, a library is more than a database available from a home computer; it is a setting shaped by encounters, discussion and the circulation of ideas among people.

That emphasis places the exhibition within a wider question facing research libraries and museums: how to widen access without making the physical visit seem unnecessary. Digital copies can reduce barriers for scholars and readers far from Rome, yet they cannot reproduce the shared setting the pope described. AQVA therefore serves as an invitation to come to the library in person, using art and rare books to make the institution’s atmosphere part of the experience rather than simply the location of it.

There is an unavoidable tension in that approach. Online access remains important for study, particularly when a collection cannot be visited easily, while in-person exhibitions have limits of geography and time. The Vatican’s position does not reject digitization; instead, it treats digital availability and physical presence as complementary. What happens next will be watched through the remaining years of Catastrophe and Wonder: whether each chapter can connect a different historic threat to the written word with new ways for visitors to engage with it.

Source: Smithsonian Magazine