Fairmount Water Works

Trash Free Waters Art Show
2024-12-26 10:00 - 2024-12-28 17:00, 2025-01-02 10:00 - 2025-01-04 17:00, 2025-01-08 10:00 - 2025-01-11 17:00, 2025-01-15 10:00 - 2025-01-18 17:00, 2025-01-22 10:00 - 2025-01-25 17:00, 2025-01-29 10:00 - 2025-02-01 17:00, 2025-02-05 10:00 - 2025-02-08 17:00, 2025-02-12 10:00 - 2025-02-15 17:00 (America/New_York) and 9 more dates | Fairmount Water Works, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130, United States
Come view a selection of entries from the 2023 Trash Free Waters Art Contest, organized by the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary.
Artists from across the Delaware Estuary region were asked to create a piece of artwork related to the theme of Trash Free Waters. Artwork could use any medium, but had to be created on a provided 12″ by 9″ canvas. The goal of the art contest was to bring awareness to the problem of aquatic trash and highlight the ways people can help be part of the solution.
Winners were chosen by public vote at the 2023 Delaware River Festival, held at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia on September 9th.
Winning artwork have been turned into advertisements to help share the message of the importance of keeping out local waterways trash free!
View during Interpretive Center hours starting August 10: Wednesday – Saturday: 10am-5pm

Bodies of Water Dance Performance
2025-05-03 12:00 - 13:00 | Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130
The Naked Stark is a Partner in Movement at Fairmount Water Works. Come and celebrate the first performance of their residency!
Free performances will be shown in tandem with free gallery tours of the Fairmount Water Works’ new art exhibit “CONFLUENCE.”
May 3, 12 PM & 12:30 PM
Come for am art tour at 11pm and stay for a dance performance at 12pm!
Come for a dance performance at 12:30 and stay for an art tour at 1pm!

Bodies of Water
2025-07-12 12:00 - 13:00, 2025-07-26 12:00 - 13:00 | Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130

Bodies of Water
2025-09-27 13:00 - 15:00 | Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130
Bodies of Water
The Naked Stark
Art for Young Audiences, Dance, Immersive & Interactive Experience
Meet The Naked Stark at Fairmount Water Works!
Our 10th annual community gathering offers a glimpse into our process and a sneak peek into our 2026 production. Dive into an exploration of water, time and space celebrating the site’s architecture, and the mosaic of memories in the former Kelly Pool.
Bodies of Water co-creators, Amalia Colón-Nava, Chloe Marie, Harlee Trautman, Katherine Kiefer Stark, Marcie Mamura, and Meredith Stapleton, navigate the interplay of each performers’ relationship to water. We are at once streams flowing together and humans making space for each other, carrying and being carried along, discovering the power and possibilities that emerge when we come together.
This piece is an offering to drift, pause, and plunge into a shared inquiry of place and process; a phase in an ever evolving project. We invite you to enter the current of unfolding together, between the seen and unseen, and the water nearby.
Join us for a performance and reception as we discover mutual buoyancy, find each other in the vastness, dive through turbulence, and surface together.
The event is 1-3pm, featuring three experiences, including a 20 minute performance. The event ends with a reception open to all.
This event is for all ages – meet us at the river!

CURRENTS: A Multimedia Exhibition Opening Reception
2026-05-09 13:00 - 16:00 | PA
In CURRENTS, ten prominent local artists will expose the hidden mysteries of the raw architecture and underground corridors beneath the historic Fairmount Water Works (FWW).
Imaginative site-specific artworks will immerse visitors in the voices of the river and the history and ecology of the Water Works and its environs. Trickling harmonic notes will accompany ephemeral video projections while haunting multi-media installations will connect colonial times to both the real present and an imagined future 250 years ahead.
CURRENTS is curated by Philadelphia Sculptors, and is a FWW, PHL250 and Global Philadelphia World Heritage Month event.
Philadelphia Sculptors works to promote contemporary sculpture and expand public awareness of the role and value of sculpture through exhibitions, public forums, and educational outreach.
Co-Curators: Elaine Crivelli, Leslie Kaufman, and Marsha Moss.

Participating Artists: Joy Feasley and Paul Swenbeck, Julianna Foster, Carolyn Healy and John Phillips, Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib, Eugene Lew, Martha McDonald, and Taji Ra’oof Nahl.

WE THE PEOPLE: Preserve Our Right To Clean Water Preview Reception
2026-05-14 16:30 - 18:30 | Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130
WE THE PEOPLE: Preserve Our Right To Clean Water
4th Annual Special Fine Art Exhibition
Preview Reception
The Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) has been a national leader in educating the public about the value of clean water and the need for public stewardship of our regional and local watersheds. This exhibition encapsulates these ideas and invites visitors to engage in thought and discussion sparked by a series of events which celebrate clean water including a fine art exhibition, installations, dance performances and interactive displays throughout the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center (FWWIC).
The exhibition will be open to the public from May 16 to August 1, 2026.
Participating Artists: Keith Breitfeller , *Emily Brown, Brian David Dennis, Thom Duffy, **Benjamin Passione, Rinal Parikh ,
Amie Potsic, Ana Vizcarra Rankin, Robert Reinhardt and Michael Williamson.
Courtesy of Galleries: *Avery Galleries and **Gross McCleaf Gallery.
The exhibition is curated by Thom Duffy under the direction of Karen Young, FWWIC Director, and brought to you in part by the Fund for the Water Works and the Edward F. Grusheski Water Literacy Foundation.

CURRENTS: Taji Ra'oof Nahl - Special Artist Performance
2026-05-16 14:00 - 15:00, 2026-06-06 14:00 - 15:00 | Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130
Join us in this Special Artist Performance of CURRENTS!
In CURRENTS, imaginative site-specific artworks will immerse visitors in the voices of the river and the history and ecology of the Water Works and its environs. Trickling harmonic notes will accompany ephemeral video projections while haunting multi-media installations will connect colonial times to both the real present and an imagined future 250 years ahead.

Taji Ra’oof Nahl is a conceptual artist working across sculpture, film, sound, and collective study. He is a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts. He is the architect of the TR7 Ecosystem—an evolving platform that organizes installations, moving image, performance, and collaboration into a unified cultural infrastructure. His work operates through Field Trips, Video Almanacs, live scoring sessions, and staged productions that examine overlooked histories and the movement of knowledge through civic space.
CURRENTS is curated by Philadelphia Sculptors, and is a FWW, PHL250 and Global Philadelphia World Heritage Month event.
Philadelphia Sculptors works to promote contemporary sculpture and expand public awareness of the role and value of sculpture through exhibitions, public forums, and educational outreach.
Co-Curators: Elaine Crivelli, Leslie Kaufman, and Marsha Moss.

CURRENTS: Martha McDonald - Special Artist Performance
2026-05-30 14:30 - 15:30, 2026-05-31 14:30 - 15:30 | Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130
Join us in this Special Artist Performance of CURRENTS!
River Ode: The Schuylkill Freed is a site-specific performance by Martha McDonald exploring the history of the Fairmount Water Works and the life of the Schuylkill River. Sited in the abandoned John B. Kelly Pool on the ground floor of the historic building, the performance will activate the space through movement, costume and original music reflecting on the engineering feats that harnessed the power of the river to bring clean water to the people; tales of the Schuylkill Rangers, 19th century Irish river pirates from nearby Grays Ferry; and the rebirth of the river after decades of pollution.
Anchoring the piece in the Semiquincentennial, McDonald will play a glass armonica—an instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin that uses water to make music. A series of spinning glass bowls that create ethereal tones when touched with wet fingers, the glass armonica evokes the water wheels that once hummed in this building and conjures a mournful resonance within its crumbling walls.
CURRENTS is curated by Philadelphia Sculptors, and is a FWW, PHL250 and Global Philadelphia World Heritage Month event.
Philadelphia Sculptors works to promote contemporary sculpture and expand public awareness of the role and value of sculpture through exhibitions, public forums, and educational outreach.
Co-Curators: Elaine Crivelli, Leslie Kaufman, and Marsha Moss.

CURRENTS: Eugene Lew - Special Artist Performance
2026-06-06 15:00 - 16:00 | Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center, 640 Water Works Drive, Philadelphia, PA, 19130
Join us in this Special Artist Performance of CURRENTS!
In CURRENTS, imaginative site-specific artworks will immerse visitors in the voices of the river and the history and ecology of the Water Works and its environs. Trickling harmonic notes will accompany ephemeral video projections while haunting multi-media installations will connect colonial times to both the real present and an imagined future 250 years ahead.

Eugene Lew is an artist, educator, rock gardener and producer of performances, attempted transformation and playback of shared IRL experiences with a sound/music basis. Eugene creates a dry landscape garden (a karesansui) in the Kelly Natatorium suggesting the pool’s history and linking to the rolling flow of the nearby Schuylkill River. The artist will create a soundscape using sounds recorded from the river that will be used to accompany Hironaka and Suib’s installation. Bells will ring to echo passing of time, memories, and signal collective possibilities

CENTAUR CLAUSE

Aaron Igler – bells, electronics

Eugene Lew – bells, electronics

CURRENTS is curated by Philadelphia Sculptors, and is a FWW, PHL250 and Global Philadelphia World Heritage Month event.
Philadelphia Sculptors works to promote contemporary sculpture and expand public awareness of the role and value of sculpture through exhibitions, public forums, and educational outreach.
Co-Curators: Elaine Crivelli, Leslie Kaufman, and Marsha Moss.

WALKING THE SCHUYLKILL: John Brady Photography
2026-09-19 10:00 - 17:00 | PA
WALKING THE SCHUYLKILL
Photography Exhibition Opening Day
September 19, 2026
William Penn placed the city where it is because of the Schuylkill River, guaranteeing the city and the river a prominent place in American history. Over time, the Schuylkill has served the city and its industry, first with a canal system and later with railroads and highways in the river’s flood plain. Factories and mills were built along its full length. Industry radically changed the river. Along with bringing farm products and coal to the city. The Schuylkill River provided drinking water. These purposes often collided; eventually drinking water won out. The environmental movement changed the river as radically as the industrial age had. These changes, and contemporary uses, leave imprints. “Walking the Schuylkill” intends to capture and highlight those marks, illustrating the character of the modern Schuylkill River.

Come view during Interpretive Center’s open hours:
Wednesday – Saturday 10am – 5pm
September 19, 2026 – January 8, 2027
