When Birch Aquarium announced The Axolotl’s Garden in July, it had a concept and no date. It now has both, and rather more than a date: the exhibition opens October 21 with six months of programming already attached.
The exhibition, titled The Axolotl’s Garden and El Jardin del Ajolote, is built around the endangered axolotl and the culture that surrounds it. Two axolotl habitats anchor it. Alongside them sit other Mexican species that rarely get exhibition space of their own: Tequila Splitfins, Blind Cave Tetras and more, each framed around how it has survived.
What makes this different from an axolotl tank
The aquarium built it with artist Itzel Islas, and the framing is deliberately not just biological. The axolotl carries a great deal of mythology and folklore, and the exhibition treats that as part of the animal’s story rather than decoration around it.
That matters for an animal whose wild situation is genuinely dire. The axolotl is functionally gone from almost all of its native range. What remains is the canal system of Lake Xochimilco in Mexico City, and the IUCN Red List classes it as critically endangered. Most people who know what an axolotl is know it from captivity, the internet, or a game.
What is on after opening night?
The opening starts a run that goes into next spring.
October 27, Dia de los Muertos. Artist Maricruz Alvarado creates two ofrendas in the tradition of honoring animals. One is for community members’ lost pets. The other is for imperiled species including the vaquita and the axolotl. Inviting the public to bring their own dead into a conservation exhibit is an unusual move for an aquarium and a genuinely affecting one.
Next spring, a new theatrical work by Iyari Arteaga, linking axolotl stories between San Diego and Lake Xochimilco. That is the geography the exhibition is actually about, and closing the series by connecting the two ends of it is the right shape.
Halloween, which is the other reason for the date
The opening is timed to land just before the aquarium’s Halloween run, and the exhibition will be open for all three nights.
Oceans at Night: Halloween, October 22, 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., for guests 21 and over. Games, live music, costumes and the aquarium after dark. Tickets $59.95.
Halloween Aglow, October 23 and 24, 6 to 8:30 p.m., family-friendly. Trick-or-treating through the aquarium, glowing installations in the Adam R. Scripps Living Seas Gallery, a Boo and Goo Lab about the science of slime, and divers demonstrating underwater pumpkin carving. Tickets $59.95 for adults and $49.95 for children, with under-twos free.
Members save 20 percent on both. The Axolotl’s Garden itself is included with general admission, so seeing the exhibition does not require an event ticket.
The exhibition is presented by The Lodge at Torrey Pines. Birch Aquarium is the public exploration center for Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, and reaches more than 500,000 guests and over 40,000 pre-K-12 students a year.
Birch also keeps a pair of red octopuses on display, which is the other kind of animal people come to look at and then stay for.
