Black Mountain College
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| Type | Liberal arts college |
|---|---|
| Active | 1933–1957 |
| Director | John Andrew Rice (until 1940) |
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Administrative staff
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about 30 |
| Students | about 1,200 total |
| Location | Asheville and Black Mountain, North Carolina, United States |
| Website | blackmountaincollege.org |
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Black Mountain College Historic District
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| Nearest city | Black Mountain, North Carolina |
| Area | 586.9 acres (237.5 ha) |
| Built | 1923 |
| Architectural style | Bungalow/craftsman, International Style |
| NRHP Reference # | 82001281 |
| Added to NRHP | October 5, 1982 |
Black Mountain College, a school founded in 1933 in Black Mountain, North Carolina (near Asheville, North Carolina), was a new kind of college in the United States in which the study of art was seen to be central to a liberal arts education, and in which John Dewey's principles of education played a major role. Many of the school's students and faculty were influential in the arts or other fields, or went on to become influential. Although notable even during its short life, the school closed in 1957 after only 24 years. The history and legacy of Black Mountain College are preserved and extended through Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, in downtown Asheville, NC.
The school's Lake Eden campus, used from 1941 to 1957, is now part of Camp Rockmont, a summer camp for boys, and the adjacent Lake Eden Events & Lodging.
Founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, Frederick Georgia, and Ralph Lounsbury, all dismissed faculty members of Rollins College, Black Mountain was experimental by nature and committed to an interdisciplinary approach, attracting a faculty that included many of America's leading visual artists, composers, poets, and designers, like Buckminster Fuller, who developed the geodesic dome.
Operating in a relatively isolated rural location with little budget, Black Mountain College inculcated an informal and collaborative spirit and over its lifetime attracted a venerable roster of instructors. Some of the innovations, relationships, and unexpected connections formed at Black Mountain would prove to have a lasting influence on the postwar American art scene, high culture, and eventually pop culture.Buckminster Fuller met student Kenneth Snelson at Black Mountain, and the result was their first geodesic dome (improvised out of Venetian blind slats in the school's back yard); Merce Cunningham formed his dance company; and John Cage staged his first happening (the term itself is traceable to Cage's student Allan Kaprow, who applied it later to such events).
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