# Black Mountain College [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mountain_College) ( Type: College ) ## Description Private experimental liberal arts college founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and others after they were dismissed from Rollins College for refusing to sign a loyalty pledge. Organized around John Dewey's holistic educational philosophy, it placed art-making and cooperative manual labor at the center of a non-hierarchical curriculum with no course requirements, official grades, or accredited degrees. Its faculty and students — including Bauhaus refugees Josef and Anni Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Robert Rauschenberg, Willem de Kooning, and Charles Olson — made it one of the single most consequential incubators of the postwar American avant-garde across visual art, dance, music, and poetry, despite closing after only 23 years and fewer than 1,200 total students. ## Key Tags #institution-builder #bauhaus ## Opportunities - Studio, farm, and construction labor in exchange for tuition; students set their own pace and decided when they were ready to graduate (defunct) ## Details When the Nazi Party shut down the Bauhaus in 1933, several of its faculty relocated to Black Mountain — most significantly Josef Albers, who led the art program (its only fixed curricular requirement, alongside a course on Plato), and his wife Anni Albers, who taught weaving and textile design. The college moved from its original rented Blue Ridge Assembly campus to a 667-acre property at Lake Eden in 1941, where faculty, staff, and students built their own campus, including the Studies Building designed by A. Lawrence Kocher. In 1944 Alma Stone Williams became one of the first Black students to enroll at an all-white institution of higher education in the segregated South; the Julius Rosenwald Fund helped fund Black faculty salaries and student scholarships in the 1940s. The college flourished as an incubator across disciplines: Buckminster Fuller and students built the first large-scale geodesic dome there; Merce Cunningham formed his dance company at Black Mountain; and in 1952 John Cage, working with David Tudor, staged what is widely considered the first "Happening," enlisting Robert Rauschenberg, Charles Olson, M. C. Richards, and Cunningham to perform simultaneous, independently conceived actions. A landmark pottery workshop that same year brought together Eastern and Western ceramic traditions. In the 1950s, under rector Charles Olson, the college's center of gravity shifted to poetry: Olson founded *The Black Mountain Review* in 1954 and, with Robert Creeley, developed the Black Mountain poets. Financial strain forced the college to close by court order in 1957; its legacy is preserved today by the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in nearby Asheville, founded 1993. ### Concepts and Theories - `[[Concept Name]]` - %%one line of text about how the organization relates to the concept or theory (link to 210 - Concept page)%% ### Creative and Technical Practices - [[Happening]] - John Cage and David Tudor staged the first "Happening" at Black Mountain in 1952, with Rauschenberg, Olson, M. C. Richards, and Cunningham ### Key People - [[David Tudor]] - collaborated with John Cage on the 1952 Black Mountain "Happening" - [[Stan VanDerBeek]] - among the students/staff who worked on the Lake Eden campus's Science Building - John Cage - staged the first "Happening" there, 1952, with David Tudor - Merce Cunningham - formed his dance company at the college - Josef Albers - led the art program, 1933–1949, before founding Yale's design department - Anni Albers - taught weaving and textile design - Charles Olson - rector in the 1950s; founded *The Black Mountain Review*, 1954, and developed the Black Mountain poets with Robert Creeley - Buckminster Fuller - built the first large-scale geodesic dome there with students - Robert Rauschenberg - student and later collaborator on the 1952 "Happening" ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography Olson, Charles, founding editor. *The Black Mountain Review*. Black Mountain College, 1954–1957. House literary journal of the Black Mountain poets. ### Secondary Sources Bibliography Harris, Mary Emma. *The Arts at Black Mountain College*. MIT Press, 2002. Comprehensive institutional history of the college's art program. Díaz, Eva. *The Experimenters: Chance and Design at Black Mountain College*. University of Chicago Press, 2015. Study of chance procedure and experimental pedagogy at the college, centered on Cage, Fuller, and Albers. Duberman, Martin. *Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community*. W. W. Norton, 1971. Early and widely cited institutional history.