Subject: Re: [permaculture] Permaculture Web Developers Guild?
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 19:05:49 -0500
Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote:
How far are you from Black Mountain College? Is it still there? Used
for anything?
We live about 20 minutes from there.
The buildings are still there but is no longer as famous as it was
during its heyday in the 30's, 40's and early 50's. The 600 Acres are
used to host the Lake Eden Arts Festival, a very big twice a year event
with LOTS of music and art. There's a museum and arts center
(http://www.blackmountaincollege.org/). There's an enormous amount of
stuff about the college online. Google popped up almost 24,000 links. I
think Earthaven has the potential to help fill the void left by the BMC
luminaries. Warren Wilson College, just down the road, is doing
exceptional work with a strong ecological curriculum. We're doing
increasingly more with them and even beginning to offer classes at
Earthaven for which students can earn credit. We've had a few hundred
students here over the last few years helping with a variety of projects.
Keith
For a short time in the middle of the twentieth century a small town in
North Carolina became a hub of American cultural production. The town
was Black Mountain and the reason was Black Mountain College. Founded in
1933, the school was a reaction to the more traditional schools of the
time. At its core was the assumption that a strong liberal and fine arts
education must happen simultaneously inside and outside the classroom.
Combining communal living with an informal class structure, Black
Mountain created an environment conducive to the interdisciplinary work
that was to revolutionize the arts and sciences of its time.
Among Black Mountain's first professors were the artists Josef and Anni
Albers, who had fled Nazi Germany after the closing of the Bauhaus. It
was their progressive work in painting and textiles that first attracted
students from around the country. Once there, however, students and
faculty alike realized that Black Mountain College was one of the few
schools sincerely dedicated to educational and artistic experimentation.
By the forties, Black Mountain's faculty included some of the greatest
artists and thinkers of its time: Walter Gropius, Jacob Lawrence, Willem
de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, John Cage, Alfred Kazin, Merce
Cunningham, and Paul Goodman. Students found themselves at the locus of
such wide ranging innovations as Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic Dome,
Charles Olson's Projective Verse, and some of the first performance art
in the U.S.
By the late 40s, word of what was happening in North Carolina had
started to spread throughout the country. With a Board of Directors that
included William Carlos Williams and Albert Einstein and impressive
programs in poetry and photography, Black Mountain had become the ideal
of American experimental education. Its concentration on cross-genre
arts education would influence the programs of many major American
institutions.
In 1953, as many of the students and faculty left for San Francisco and
New York, those still at Black Mountain saw the shift in interest and
knew the school had run its course. Black Mountain had existed on its
own terms, and on its own terms had succeeded in expanding the
possibilities of American education. Realizing that they had essentially
achieved their goals, they closed their doors forever. Black Mountain's
legacy continued however, with former students such as painter Robert
Rauschenberg, publisher Jonathan Williams, and poet John Wieners
bringing the revolutionary spirit of their alma mater to the forefront
of a number of other cultural movements and institutions.
--
Keith Johnson
Permaculture Activist Magazine
PO Box 1209
Black Mountain, NC 28711
(828)669-6336