Pool: A Social History of Segregation explores race and public pools in the United States as well as African Americans’ relationship with water over time. Funded through a $260,000 grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, the 4,700-square-foot exhibition was originally scheduled to open in September of 2021 but was delayed due to flooding from Hurricane Ida. After six months of restoration efforts, the exhibit opened on March 22, 2022, which fittingly was World Water Day. The majority of the exhibit is located in and around the Kelly Natatorium, known as the Kelly Pool, within the Fairmount Water Works building. This indoor pool opened in 1961 as an Olympic training facility, and later became a public pool. The city of Philadelphia closed Kelly Pool in 1972, when flooding from Hurricane Agnes damaged the natatorium, and it subsequently fell into disrepair.1

This location has been brilliantly repurposed for...

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