During a period of Jim Crow laws, strict segregation, and unrelenting racism, Paradise Park—which offered everything from sandy beaches and boat rides to concerts and reptile shows—provided an opportunity for Black Americans to briefly escape oppression into a world of joy and leisure.

Towns is a fiber artist and figurative painter whose work has been featured in several recent exhibitions and appears in the permanent collections of significant museums, including Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Baltimore Museum of Art; Boise Art Museum, Idaho; and the Rockwell Museum, Corning, New York, among many others.

Organized by the Wichita Art Museum, the exhibition showcases Towns’ quilts and paintings alongside historic Bruce Mozert photographs that inspired them. Safer Waters also includes Paradise Park objects from Florida archives and collectors—souvenirs of a summer afternoon spent relaxing with family and friends at the beach.

To bring it home to Wichita, WAM is collaborating with the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum and The Kansas African American Museum to connect Towns’ art with our own history of midcentury Black recreation. Be sure to take time during your visit to watch a new documentary film that will be displayed in-gallery featuring interviews with Towns and with the people who worked and played at Paradise Park.

Safer Waters: Picturing Black Recreation at Midcentury is organized by the Wichita Art Museum.

2025 exhibitions and public programs are generously supported by the Downing Foundation. All museum exhibitions receive generous sponsorship from the Friends of the Wichita Art Museum and the City of Wichita.