Avant Garde in a Remote, Pristine, Pastoral Setting

The setting for Black Mountain College was idyllic, on 600 acres of meadow surrounded by the Blue Ridge. In this pristine pastoral setting, the college’s short-lived experiment produced a remarkable history during the 24 years it thrived.

Back in 1933, a group of idealistic educators dared to start a college based on complete artistic freedom and interdisciplinary learning.  Black Mountain College would have an outsized impact on modern art and thought.

Black Mountain College was founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, who was dismissed from Rollins College in Florida primarily for his unorthodox educational beliefs, including the freedom for students to learn in their own way.  Rice and eight other faculty who resigned in solidarity, along with some like-minded students, started a new experimental college based on John Dewey’s philosophy of learning by doing.

Rice sought to reform rigid, assembly-line schools by empowering students to guide their own learning.  As the Great Depression swept the country, rebellion brewed against convention.

Meanwhile, in Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler persecuted artists and intellectuals, intent on conforming the famed Bauhaus art school to his oppressive vision.  Josef Albers, a leading Bauhaus teacher, defiantly closed the school rather than submit.  Albers and his Jewish wife Anni desperately needed to escape the Third Reich’s grasp.

At the same time, Rice needed a place to pioneer his progressive education ideas,  and he chose the secluded North Carolina mountains, while thousands of miles away in Germany, the Albers needed a refuge to begin anew.  Albers and Rice’s needs converged.  Here, the Bauhaus philosophy could flourish again, helping Rice reboot American education far from authoritarian control.  A quiet Appalachian haven awaited where creativity and freedom could take root.

In its first year, Black Mountain had around two dozen students and half as many teachers who pooled their personal book collections to form the library.  A crucial part of Rice’s vision was to put the arts at the center of the curriculum.  He believed studying art taught students to struggle with their own ignorance and lack of skill.  The goal was not to produce artists but thinking citizens capable of making complex choices honed by the discipline of the arts.  Students were required to study fine art, music, and drama, with other classes scheduled around them.  As the Albers Foundation director Nicholas Fox Weber states, “Art was not relegated to the sidelines; it was the basis of all education.”

Word of Black Mountain College’s bold educational experiment soon spread, attracting brilliant but often eccentric minds to its faculty. Though notorious for clashing egos, they represented some of the era’s most influential innovators across the arts and sciences.

The prestigious roster fairly glittered with avant-garde stars: abstract expressionist painters Willem de Kooning and wife Elaine brought their provocative canvases. Iconoclast composer John Cage pushed musical boundaries with his ‘chance’ techniques. Futurist architect Buckminster Fuller, father of the dymaxion house, envisioned radical new living spaces.

The college became a magnet for the world’s most progressive thinkers and artists seeking an environment of complete creative freedom. Students reveled in the electric atmosphere generated by the legendary talents, sparking new ideas and movements within the college’s walls.

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Fleeing Nazi Germany after the Bauhaus closed, influential artists Josef and Anni Albers became the first professors at Black Mountain College. Their innovative painting and textile work drew students nationwide to the school’s genuine commitment to educational and artistic experimentation.

By the 1940s, Black Mountain boasted a faculty of luminaries like Walter Gropius, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham. Students found themselves at the epicenter of groundbreaking works such as Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Dome and early performance art.

As word spread of the North Carolina school’s boundary-pushing programs in poetry, photography, and more, Black Mountain became the gold standard for American experimental education. Its board included luminaries William Carlos Williams and Albert Einstein. Black Mountain’s interdisciplinary arts approach would shape curricula at major institutions for decades to come.

Black Mountain College was the epicenter of radical thought and expression for nearly a quarter century, defined by its daring community of visionaries who changed the world.

“The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC) preserves and continues the legacy of educational and artistic innovation of Black Mountain College (BMC). We achieve our mission through collection, conservation, and educational activities, including exhibitions, publications, and public programs.”  Click here to view the BMC Yearbook project to find incredible images and stories of BMC students and faculty

The Johnson Collection  Spartenburg, SC.
Situated in the heart of Spartanburg’s resurgent city center, the AC Hotel Spartanburg functions as a showcase for modern masterpieces created by renowned artists associated with the avant-garde arts enclave of Black Mountain College. A selection of forty works, carefully curated from the Johnson Collection’s holdings for site-specific presentation, is on permanent view throughout the first floor and mezzanine—the perfect complement to the AC brand’s European origins and cosmopolitan character, offered with a decidedly Southern twist.