Black Mountain College

Black Mountain College was an experimental college founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and several others. Based in Black Mountain, North Carolina, the school was ideologically organized around John Dewey's principles of education, which emphasized holistic learning and the study of art as central to a liberal arts education. Many of the school's faculty and students were or would go on to become highly influential in the arts, including such people as Josef and Anni Albers, Walter Gropius, Robert Motherwell, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Buckminster Fuller, Willem and Elaine de Kooning and Allen Ginsberg, among others. Although it was quite notable during its lifetime, the school closed in 1957 after 24 years due to funding issues. The history and legacy of Black Mountain College are preserved and extended by the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center located in downtown Asheville, NC.
Black Mountain was founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, Frederick Georgia, and Ralph Lounsbury, who were controversially dismissed as faculty from Rollins College for refusing to sign a loyalty pledge. The school was experimental by 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. Operating in a relatively isolated rural location with little budget, Black Mountain depended upon its students and faculty. 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 and students, where Merce Cunningham formed his dance company, and where John Cage staged his first musical happening.

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