Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style

28 Mar-17 Aug 2025

Overview

Explore a new exhibition celebrating our century-long love affair with swimming and the influence of design on everything from swimwear to art deco architecture.

Across three in-depth sections that reflect the three locations in which we swim — the pool, the lido and nature — the exhibition will dive into design’s role in shaping our relationship with swimming, both in the water and beside it.

The exhibition’s story will begin in the 1920s, when swimwear began to be marketed for swimming rather than the Victorian’s preference for bathing, and when beach holidays exploded in popularity. It will explore right up to the present day, and swimming’s role in modern life such as how it influences and subverts our ideas of body autonomy and agency, as well as its link to environmental issues.

Discover over 200 objects, collectively exploring swimming’s evolution in its social, cultural, technological and environmental contexts, including Pamela Anderson's sensational Baywatch swimsuit, the first Olympic solo swimming gold medal won by a British woman, and a selection of eye-catching men’s Speedos from the 1980s. Other objects on view will be the banned ‘technical doping’ LZR Racer swimsuit, one of the earliest surviving examples of a bikini, and a detailed architectural model of the Zaha Hadid-designed London 2012 Aquatics Centre.

Splash! is guest-curated by Amber Butchart, a dress and design historian and broadcaster known for her history segments on BBC One’s The Great British Sewing Bee.
 

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