Part-time casual

Lüneburg II by Lyonel Feininger via Guggenheim Museum

Size: 43.6x35.1 cm Medium: Watercolor and ink on paper

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf, By purchase © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Are these swimmers fish out of water, or more appropriately fish in need of water?

These students are laying at the bottom of the empty Art Linkletter Natatorium pool at Springfield College during preseason training in the fall of 1994. Students are posing doing different swimming strokes - some are doing freestyle strokes, some are doing backstroke, and some are doing butterfly strokes.

Arthur Gordon Linkletter, also known as Art Linkletter, suggested that the college build a new swimming and diving facility. Linkletter was the famed entertainer best known for his TV series “House Party“ that ran on CBS from 1952 to 1969. Linkletter believed so much in the project that he sold his house for $250,000 and donated the money to the project.

On the day of the dedication, October 21, 1967, the former swimming coach, Charles E. “Red” Silvia and Linkletter raced each other in the new pool. Linkletter beat Silvia by a tenth of a second. Later it was revealed that Linkletter had trained for three months prior to the event.