Pooler Room

For its eighth season, Mister Fahrenheit is very pleased to present Pooler Room, a solo exhibition by Jill Magid. Bringing together installation, text, painting, and performance, Magid uses Mister Fahrenheit as her stage to trace power structures, intimately probing relations between individuals and the federal institutions designed to protect them. 

Pooler Room unfolds across a space that once housed a subterranean swimming pool belonging to former resident and Vietnam War Marine veteran, Robert (“Bobby”) Muller (b. 1946). After sustaining a spinal injury during the War that left him paralyzed from the chest down, Muller became an outspoken peace activist and advocate of veterans’ rights.

The artist overlays another site where water, recovery, and state power intersect: the White House. In 1933, an indoor therapy pool was built in the West Wing for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who took up swimming following his diagnosis with polio. Later, this pool was forced underground when the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room was constructed above it.

Magid’s exhibition at Mister Fahrenheit is structured across two levels. 

Upstairs, a carpet is modeled after the platform in the White House press briefing room. The exhibition’s title refers to the press pool, a rotating group of journalists tasked with witnessing and relaying the actions and statements of the president on behalf of the broader press corps. A stenographer’s note from a pool report is presented on the wall, while a continuous C-SPAN broadcast fills the space.

Downstairs, the former swimming pool is held in outline. A Program for Pooler Room rests on a stand, its text written in the format of an official White House program and rendered by one of its former calligraphers. Throughout the exhibition, this work will be performed at intervals by vocalist Charmaine Lee, whose voice is altered by the presence of water in her mouth. Layered with audio from an interview with Bobby Muller, these performances focus on moments when the sound of the interviewer’s pen competes with Muller’s voice. 

At the other end of the space, just above the tile line, is a painted fragment of the mural that once surrounded the White House swimming pool. The image remains partial, withholding a complete view.​​