‘The first thing to say is that I’m a terrible swimmer,” says Amber Butchart, curator of a new exhibition on swimming that opens at the Design Museum in London this week. Growing up, school swimming lessons were “horrible, traumatic” – the cold water, the humiliation, the scrutiny from teenage boys. But something shifted when she moved to Margate 10 years ago and discovered the joy of swimming in the resort’s huge tidal pool, which was built in the 1930s. “This sounds quite pretentious, but it’s this idea of becoming one with the horizon,” says Butchart. “It’s almost like an existential feeling of the vastness of the world and being physically a part of that when you’re immersed in water. It’s transformational.”
Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style explores our enduring love affair with swimming, from Britain’s lido boom of the 1920s and 30s to the Mermaidcore trend which has been all over TikTok in recent years. Among the 200 exhibits are the first Olympic solo swimming gold medal won by a British woman, a selection of men’s Speedos from the 1980s and the iconic red swimsuit worn by Pamela Anderson in Baywatch. Though the exhibition tells the story of swimming through the lens of design and fashion, Butchart was keen to avoid the kitschy stereotypes of “bathing beauties” that often accompany the theme, and to take a deeper dive into the politics of the swimming pool.
