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Black Mountain College was a
private liberal arts college in
Black Mountain, North Carolina
Black Mountain is a town in Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 7,848 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Asheville Metropolitan Statistical Area. The town is named for the old train stop at the Black Mountain Dep ...
. It was founded in 1933 by
John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and several others. The college was ideologically organized around
John Dewey's educational philosophy, which emphasized holistic learning and the study of art as central to a
liberal arts education.
Many of the college's faculty and students were or would go on to become highly influential in the arts, including
Josef and
Anni Albers
Anni Albers (born Annelise Elsa Frieda Fleischmann; June 12, 1899 – May 9, 1994) was a German textile artist and printmaker credited with blurring the lines between traditional craft and art.
Early life and education
Anni Albers was born Ann ...
,
Charles Olson
Charles Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modern American poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York ...
,
Ruth Asawa
Ruth Aiko Asawa (January 24, 1926 – August 5, 2013) was an American modernist sculptor. Her work is featured in collections at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.[< ...]
,
Max Dehn
Max Wilhelm Dehn (November 13, 1878 – June 27, 1952) was a German mathematician most famous for his work in geometry, topology and geometric group theory. Born to a Jewish family in Germany, Dehn's early life and career took place in Germany. ...
,
Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one ...
,
Ray Johnson
Raymond Edward "Ray" Johnson (October 16, 1927 – January 13, 1995) was an American artist. Known primarily as a collagist and correspondence artist, he was a seminal figure in the history of Neo-Dada and early Pop art and was described as ,
Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American abstract expressionist painter, printmaker, and editor of ''The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology''. He was one of the youngest of the New York School, which also inc ...
,
Dorothea Rockburne
Dorothea Rockburne DFA (born c. 1932) is an abstract painter, drawing inspiration primarily from her deep interest in mathematics and astronomy. Her work is geometric and abstract, seemingly simple but very precise to reflect the mathematical co ...
,
Cy Twombly
Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly Jr. (; April 25, 1928July 5, 2011) was an American painter, sculptor and photographer. He belonged to the generation of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.
Twombly is said to have influenced younger artists such as ...
,
Robert Rauschenberg,
Susan Weil,
Merce Cunningham
Mercier Philip "Merce" Cunningham (April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of American modern dance for more than 50 years. He frequently collaborated with artists of other discipl ...
,
John Cage,
Buckminster Fuller
Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing mo ...
,
Franz Kline
Franz Kline (May 23, 1910 – May 13, 1962) was an American painter. He is associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s. Kline, along with other action painters like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Mot ...
,
Aaron Siskind,
Willem
Willem () is a Dutch and West FrisianRienk de Haan, ''Fryske Foarnammen'', Leeuwarden, 2002 (Friese Pers Boekerij), , p. 158. masculine given name. The name is Germanic, and can be seen as the Dutch equivalent of the name William in English, ...
and
Elaine de Kooning
Elaine Marie Catherine de Kooning (, née Fried; March 12, 1918 – February 1, 1989) was an Abstract Expressionist and Figurative Expressionist painter in the post-World War II era. She wrote extensively on the art of the period and was an edit ...
, and
Mary Caroline Richards. Although it was quite notable during its lifetime, the school closed in 1957 after 24 years due to funding issues;
Camp Rockmont for Boys now sits on the campus' site. The history and legacy of Black Mountain College are preserved and extended by the
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, located in downtown
Asheville
Asheville ( ) is a city in, and the county seat of, Buncombe County, North Carolina. Located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the state's 11th-most populous ci ...
, North Carolina.
History
Black Mountain was founded in 1933 by
John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, Frederick Georgia, and Ralph Lounsbury, who were dismissed as faculty from
Rollins College in a seminal
academic freedom
Academic freedom is a moral and legal concept expressing the conviction that the freedom of inquiry by faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy as well as the principles of academia, and that scholars should have freedom to teac ...
incident, specifically for refusing to sign a loyalty pledge, for which Rollins was formally censured by the
American Association of University Professors
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is an organization of professors and other academics in the United States. AAUP membership includes over 500 local campus chapters and 39 state organizations.
The AAUP's stated mission is ...
. The institution was established to "avoid the pitfalls of autocratic chancellors and trustees and allow for a more flexible curriculum," and "with the holistic aim 'to educate a student as a person and a citizen.'" The school was originally funded through a $10,000 gift from "Mac" Forbes, a former Rollins College faculty member, after the founders were unable to raise funds from traditional sources.
:7
Black Mountain was experimental in nature and committed to an
interdisciplinary approach, prioritizing art-making as a necessary component of education and attracting a faculty and lecturers that included many of America's leading visual artists, composers, poets, and designers.
During the 1930s and 1940s the school flourished, becoming well known as an incubator for artistic talent. Notable events at the school were common; it was here that the first large-scale geodesic dome was made by faculty member
Buckminster Fuller
Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing mo ...
and students, where
Merce Cunningham
Mercier Philip "Merce" Cunningham (April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of American modern dance for more than 50 years. He frequently collaborated with artists of other discipl ...
formed his dance company, and where
John Cage staged his first musical
happening.
In the 1950s, the focus of the school shifted to the literary arts under the rectorship of
Charles Olson
Charles Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modern American poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York ...
. Olson founded ''The Black Mountain Review'' in 1954 and, together with his colleague and student
Robert Creeley
Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. He was close with Char ...
, developed the poetic school of
Black Mountain poets
The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid-20th-century American ''avant-garde'' or postmodern poets centered on Black Mountain College in North Carolina.
Background
Although it lasted only twenty-three ...
.
Additionally, the College was an important incubator for the American
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
. Black Mountain proved to be an important precursor to and prototype for many of the alternative colleges of today, ranging from
College of the Atlantic
College of the Atlantic (COA) is a private liberal arts college in Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Island, Maine, United States. Founded in 1969, it awards bachelors and masters ( M.Phil.) degrees solely in the field of human ecology, an interdiscipli ...
,
Naropa University, the
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...
, and
Marlboro College to
The Evergreen State College
The Evergreen State College is a public liberal arts college in Olympia, Washington. Founded in 1967, it offers a non-traditional undergraduate curriculum in which students have the option to design their own study towards a degree or follow a p ...
,
Hampshire College
Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was opened in 1970 as an experiment in alternative education, in association with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley: Amherst College, Smith College, Mo ...
,
Shimer College
Shimer Great Books School (pronounced ) is a Great Books college that is part of North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Prior to 2017, Shimer was an independent, accredited college on the south side of Chicago, with a history of being ...
,
Prescott College
Prescott College is a private college in Prescott, Arizona.
History
In 1965, the Ford Foundation brought together a group of educators from around the United States. Prescott College was the result of this gathering.
The college was originall ...
,
Goddard College
Goddard College is a progressive education private liberal arts low-residency college with three locations in the United States: Plainfield, Vermont; Port Townsend, Washington; and Seattle, Washington. The college offers undergraduate and gra ...
,
World College West (1973-1992), and
New College of Florida, among others, including
Warren Wilson College
Warren Wilson College (WWC) is a private liberal arts college in Swannanoa, North Carolina. It is known for its curriculum that combines academics, work, and service as every student must complete a requisite course of study, work an on-campu ...
located just minutes down the road from where Black Mountain College was located.
Bennington College
Bennington College is a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Vermont. Founded in 1932 as a women's college, it became co-educational in 1969. It claims to be the first college to include visual and performing arts as an equal partner in ...
, based on the same philosophy, was founded one year before Black Mountain College.
Structure
![Black Mtn College](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Black_Mtn_College.jpg)
The school operated using non-hierarchical methodologies that placed students and educators on the same plane. Revolving around 20th-century ideals about the value and importance of balancing education, art, and cooperative labor, students were required to participate in farm work, construction projects, and kitchen duty as part of their holistic education.
The students were involved at all levels of institutional decision-making. They were also left in charge of deciding when they were ready to graduate, which notoriously few ever did. There were no course requirements, official grades (except for transfer purposes), or accredited degrees. Graduates were presented with handcrafted diplomas as purely ceremonial symbols of their achievement. The liberal arts program offered at Black Mountain was broad, and supplemented by art making as a means of cultivating creative thinking within all fields.
While Josef Albers led the school, the only two requirements were a course on materials and form taught by Albers and a course on Plato.
Sociopolitical context
In 1933, the Nazis shut down the
Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 20 ...
in Germany, a similarly progressive arts-based educational institution. Many of the school's faculty left Europe for the US, and a number of them settled at Black Mountain, most notably
Josef Albers
Josef Albers (; ; March 19, 1888March 25, 1976) was a German-born artist and educator. The first living artist to be given a solo show at MoMA and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he taught at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College ...
, who was selected to run the art program, and his wife
Anni Albers
Anni Albers (born Annelise Elsa Frieda Fleischmann; June 12, 1899 – May 9, 1994) was a German textile artist and printmaker credited with blurring the lines between traditional craft and art.
Early life and education
Anni Albers was born Ann ...
, who taught weaving and textile design.
Adolf Hitler's rise to power and the subsequent persecution taking place in Europe led many artists and intellectuals to flee and resettle in the US, populating Black Mountain College with an influx of both students and faculty.
In addition, the college was operating in the South during the period of legal racial segregation at other colleges and universities in the region. While not immune from racial tensions, the student
Alma Stone Williams, an African-American woman who enrolled at Black Mountain College in 1944, is considered by some to be the first black student to enroll in an all-white institution of higher education in the South during the
Jim Crow era.
Notable African-American instructors included
Carol Brice
Carol Brice (April 16, 1918 – February 15, 1985) was an American contralto. Born in Sedalia, North Carolina, she studied at Palmer Memorial Institute and later at Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama, where she received a Bachelor of Music i ...
and
Roland Hayes
Roland Wiltse Hayes (June 3, 1887 – January 1, 1977) was an American lyric tenor and composer. Critics lauded his abilities and linguistic skills demonstrated with songs in French, German, and Italian. Hayes's predecessors as well-known Afr ...
during the 1945 Summer Music Institute; Percy H. Baker, hired on full-time in 1945;
Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Armstead Lawrence (September 7, 1917 – June 9, 2000) was an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", although by his own ...
and
Gwendolyn Knight
Gwendolyn Clarine Knight (May 26, 1913 – February 18, 2005) was an American artist who was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, in the West Indies.
Knight painted throughout her life but did not start seriously exhibiting her work until the 1970s. He ...
during the 1946 Summer Art Institute; and
Mark Oakland Fax for the Spring 1946 quarter. The
Julius Rosenwald Fund
The Rosenwald Fund (also known as the Rosenwald Foundation, the Julius Rosenwald Fund, and the Julius Rosenwald Foundation) was established in 1917 by Julius Rosenwald and his family for "the well-being of mankind." Rosenwald became part-owner of S ...
provided African-American teachers' salaries as well as student scholarships.
Locations
The college originally rented the
YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly buildings south of Black Mountain, North Carolina. In 1937, it purchased a 667-acre property across the valley at Lake Eden.
:8 In May 1941, following the end of their lease at Blue Ridge Assembly, the College moved its operations to Lake Eden, where it remained until its closing in 1957.
:8 The property was later purchased and converted to an ecumenical Christian boys' residential summer camp (
Camp Rockmont). This has been used for years as the site of the Black Mountain Festival, the
Lake Eden Arts Festival, and
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center'
HAPPENING A number of the original structures are still in use as lodgings or administrative facilities, and two frescos painted by
Jean Charlot
Louis Henri Jean Charlot (February 8, 1898 – March 20, 1979) was a French-born American painter and illustrator, active mainly in Mexico and the United States.
Life
Charlot was born in Paris. His father, Henri, owned an import-export business ...
remain intact on the site.
Closing
Black Mountain College closed in 1957, eight years after Albers left to direct the first design department at
Yale
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...
. The college suspended classes by court order due to debts; the school was unable to sustain itself financially given the greatly decreased number of students. In 1962, the school's books were finally closed, with all debts covered.
Legacy
The
Black Mountain College Museum & Arts Center, founded in 1993, continues the legacy of Black Mountain College through talks, exhibitions, performances, collection and preservation, and an annual fall conference that examines the college's history and impact. Th
Journal of Black Mountain College Studiesis a peer-reviewed, open-access digital publication that publishes articles, essays, and creative work related to the school and the individuals associated with it.
Black Mountain College was the subject of the museum exhibition ''Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957,'' which opened at the
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is an art museum and exhibition space located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America. The museum was founded as the Boston Museum of Modern Art in 1936. Since then it has gone through multiple na ...
on October 10, 2015. The show was curated by
Helen Molesworth with Ruth Erickson.
[ (exhibit review)] The show later exhibited at the
Hammer Museum from February 21 to May 15, 2016.
Black Mountain College was featured in
Nicholas Sparks
Nicholas Charles Sparks (born December 31, 1965) is an American novelist, screenwriter, and philanthropist. He has published twenty-three novels and two non-fiction books, some of which have been ''New York Times'' bestsellers, with over 115 m ...
' novel, ''
The Longest Ride'' (2013) and the
2015 movie adaptation of the same name.
See also
*
Black Mountain College faculty
*
Black Mountain College alumni
*
Antioch College
Antioch College is a private liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Founded in 1850 by the Christian Connection, the college began operating in 1852 as a non-sectarian institution; politician and education reformer Horace Mann was its ...
*
Bennington College
Bennington College is a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Vermont. Founded in 1932 as a women's college, it became co-educational in 1969. It claims to be the first college to include visual and performing arts as an equal partner in ...
*
Cooper Union
*
Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts is a graduate program associated with Bard College that grants Master of Fine Arts degrees.
Founded in 1981, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts (otherwise known as the Bard MFA program) is a nontraditi ...
*
The Evergreen State College
The Evergreen State College is a public liberal arts college in Olympia, Washington. Founded in 1967, it offers a non-traditional undergraduate curriculum in which students have the option to design their own study towards a degree or follow a p ...
*
Warren Wilson College
Warren Wilson College (WWC) is a private liberal arts college in Swannanoa, North Carolina. It is known for its curriculum that combines academics, work, and service as every student must complete a requisite course of study, work an on-campu ...
*
Rochdale College
Rochdale College was an experiment in student-run alternative education and co-operative living in Toronto, Canada from 1968 to 1975. It provided space for 840 residents in a co-operative living space. It was also an informal, noncredited free ...
*
Hampshire College
Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was opened in 1970 as an experiment in alternative education, in association with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley: Amherst College, Smith College, Mo ...
*
Goddard College
Goddard College is a progressive education private liberal arts low-residency college with three locations in the United States: Plainfield, Vermont; Port Townsend, Washington; and Seattle, Washington. The college offers undergraduate and gra ...
*
Marlboro College
*
College of the Atlantic
College of the Atlantic (COA) is a private liberal arts college in Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Island, Maine, United States. Founded in 1969, it awards bachelors and masters ( M.Phil.) degrees solely in the field of human ecology, an interdiscipli ...
*
Cornish College of the Arts
Cornish College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art college in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1914.
History
Cornish College of the Arts was founded in 1914 as the Cornish School of Music, by Nellie Cornish (1876–1956), a teacher of ...
*
New College of Florida
*
Prescott College
Prescott College is a private college in Prescott, Arizona.
History
In 1965, the Ford Foundation brought together a group of educators from around the United States. Prescott College was the result of this gathering.
The college was originall ...
[Vaughan, David. ''Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years''. Melissa Harris, ed. Aperture, 1972? Page 15ff. Cunningham and Cage met at the Cornish School. " unninghamremembers Miss Cornish saying that there were no grades, no schedules, ‘and I thought, if there’s a school like this in Seattle, imagine what there must be in New York. But I quickly found there was nothing like it there—in fact, the only other school I have found that offered the same kind of open experience was Black Mountain.’”]
References
Bibliography
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* (exhibit review)
External links
Official website'Black Mountain:A Thumbnail Sketch'(Youtube; documentary by South Carolina ETV, 14m)
{{Authority control
University and college buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina
International style architecture in North Carolina
Art schools in North Carolina
Black Mountain College alumni
Education in Buncombe County, North Carolina
Defunct private universities and colleges in North Carolina
Modernism
Music schools in North Carolina
Liberal arts colleges in North Carolina
Educational institutions established in 1933
Buildings and structures in Buncombe County, North Carolina
1933 establishments in North Carolina
1957 disestablishments in North Carolina
National Register of Historic Places in Buncombe County, North Carolina
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina
Academic freedom
Educational institutions disestablished in 1957
Rollins College