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Cancun's Underwater Museum

The city of Cancun is located on the northeast coast of Quintana Roo in southern Tours Mexico Tours, more than 1,700 km away from Mexico City. Together with Acapulco, it is one of the most renowned tourist destinations in Mexico Hotels. This city features some of the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean and its tropical weather makes it inviting all year round. No one can get bored in Cancun since it’s been planned to suit, literally, everyone’s taste! Cancun’s Underwater Museum is part of Cancun’s National Marine Park and is an attraction for children, teenagers and adults alike. Have you ever seen a fat guy having a hamburger and watching TV under the ocean? Something like that is as ridiculous as hilarious.

If you are fond of art and specially sculptures after many years of travelling around the world, you may think you’ve already seen it all. Hard materials such as stone, metal, glass, wood. Or softer materials like textiles, clay, plastic, polymers; just to mention some. You may have seen restored antiques in the form of sculptures, monuments in public places and museums, all kinds of sculptures. However, you haven’t seen it all until you visit Cancun’s Underwater Museum, a combination of art and coral reef preservation.

You don’t need to go to the UK or the West Indies to visit an underwater museum. Cancun, Punta Nizuc and Isla Mujeres have the clearest waters in the world and have their own underwater art museum since November 2009.

‘Hombre en Llamas’ (Man on Fire), ‘La Jardinera de la Esperanza’ (The Gardener of Hope) and ‘El Coleccionista de los Sueños Perdidos’ (The Archive of Lost Dreams) were the first artworks of a collection that will become the largest in the world.

‘Hombre en llamas’ is the cement sculpture of a man with 75 carved holes where a red and yellow kind of coral was planted. When coral grows, it will literally look like he’s on flames. The message behind fire is that we are severely damaging our environment. Fire’s on but we can still put it out.

‘La Jardinera de la Esperanza’ depicts a young girl lying in a patio and watching plants grow in flowerpots. These cement pots contain cuttings of live coral which are growing through the years. This girl is part of a new generation, hoped to have some more environment awareness than the past and present generations.

‘El Coleccionista de los Sueños Perdidos’ shows an underwater archive. The collection of dreams consists of hundreds of bottles once thrown into the ocean. They are categorized by four different kinds of messages: hope, fear, losse and belonging. People from a wide range of ethnicities and cultures were actually invited to write real messages for this work of art.

All of these sculptures were erected in places that had been severely damaged by hurricanes or by human actions. The location of the exhibits was specially chosen in order to promote the recovery of natural reefs and the creation of artificial ones.

The newest installation is called ‘The Silent Evolution’. It features 400 life-size figurative sculptures (nine to 20 feet tall) and is the largest and probably most ambitious work of art ever done under water. A huge gathering of many different people (a nun, a fisherman, a yoga instructor, a famous TV presenter, just to mention some) all inspired in real people with real lives, from all ages -ranging from three to 85- together. They all face the same questions concerning our impact on the environment. In the end, we all depend on mother nature. The message of unity is optimistic and full of hope.

Cancun natural reefs host 750,000 tourists every year. This gigantic sculpture provides an artificial reef big enough to alleviate the pressure of natural coral reefs in the area since marine life can inhabit and colonize. Cancun had never before been known for its culture or environmental awareness. The Silent Evolution aims to promoting a new generation of sustainable tourism.

The British sculptor Jason de Caires Taylor is the founder and Artistic Director of the museum Mexico Transfers. He gained worldwide recognition as the creator of the first underwater sculpture park in Grenada, West Indies, in 2006. ‘The Silent Evolution’ is the most ambitious work of his entire career and it proved a success.

The year 2011 started the last and third phase for the completion of the museum. Local and international artists were invited to contribute and celebrate the communion of art and science and nature.

Have you ever dived a museum? That is only one of the options. You can also snorkel or see the museum through a glass-bottomed boat. This museum is like nothing you’ve seen before. You can swim over and around sculptures and you can also touch! There, works of art don’t need to be preserved from time. Time only makes these installations look more beautiful. Aside from the environmental importance of the museum, its sights make it a must during your visit to Cancun.