Author's Note: In the second half of my 2013 interview with Alice Sebrell, Program Director of Black Mountain College + Museum (BMC+M), we start by talking about, John A. Rice, the founder of Black Mountain College (BMC). From there, the conversation moves to A Radical Vision, which was an educational exhibition presented by BMC+M. Too this, Sebrell talks about 80th anniversary of BMC, which coincided with this interview. And the discussion closes with Sebrell sharing her thoughts on how students can benefit from education today.
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THE ETERNITY GROUP
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NOVEMBER 28, 2013
POSTED IN: ARCHITECTURE, ART, FEATURE,HISTORY, UPDATES
Black Mountain College: Art Innovation and Education
By Max Eternity
ME: And of the school’s founder,
John Rice, I’ve read he was unflinching in his passion for education, that he
was a genius, and his love for teaching and learning far outweighed his
interest in institutional bureaucracy.
To this point, Rice was no stranger to controversy. Who was this man?
AS: I think your description is accurate. He was a brilliant man.
I think he could be caustic or impatient
with people sometimes; people who weren’t as quick or intellectual as he was. So I think he stepped on some toes, and you
could say that about many figures at the college. They moved along at a quick pace. It was your job as a student or college to
keep up. They weren’t going to coddle
you.
ME: Others have their
viewpoints, but from what you know about him what might John Rice say about
himself?
AS: I’m guessing here, but I think he might say
that he was misunderstood. And, I think
he would say that even though the college didn’t last beyond 24 years, it was very
successful, and that not all radical visions in education succeed in terms of
time. That that’s not the true measure
of success and that he started something great that’s had a lasting impact.
ME: It’s clear that the Bauhaus
was influential to BMC, and in many ways the schools mirrored one another. Could you talk about some of the similarities
and differences with each school?
AS: The first similarity that comes to mind is
this idea of workshops in the arts, that that was the model that they had at
the Bauhaus, and was brought here through Joseph and Annie Albers. Also, the idea of experimental performance,
theatre and interdisciplinary activities in the arts—that would be a
similarity. Another would be the fact
that the Bauhaus moved—three different locations in its short life—and Black Mountain
had 2 different homes. And that kind of
thing would not allow for any sort of entrenched or ridged way of getting into
a rut.
At the first place at Blue Mountain
Ridge, they had to go away every summer.
So each fall they set up a new, and that’s certainly uncommon.
ME: Yes, a radical approach to
living and learning.
AS: They were living on the edge. At Black Mountain College they were always
financially living on the edge. And at
the Bauhaus, in the final years they too were living on the edge; in terms of
the politics going on around them.
The main difference—from afar, my
impression is that the Bauhaus was better funded, and larger.
ME: The Bauhaus was a government
funded project. So, they had those
coffers to draw from.
AS: Yes, so they had a little more stability in
that way.
ME: Next, there is a section on
your website that speaks to an educational exhibition, called A Radical
Vision. I want to read to you a few of
the statements taken from that online catalog, and ask if you can respond to
each respectively, starting with:
“A group of creative people living,
learning, and working together with common purpose - community by design - that
was Black Mountain College, a radical vision of college as community.”
AS: I would say that it was community by design,
and they certainly made sure that it continued that way through the life of the
college. It was also by necessity, to
some degree.
Community was part of the vision
of the founder of the college, and that contributed to the intensity of that
community because not only was it a group of people who saw each other all the
time, but many of them were creative geniuses.
That aspect also factored into how it has a lasting impression on every
one.
And I think it’s certainly
different from almost every college or university today. That’s [community] not a part of anybody’s
vision today.
ME: More specifically, how so?
First of all it has to be very
small, and there are very few colleges as small as Black Mountain was. There are some that are small, but they are quite
different.
ME: And of this:
”People must be as free as possible to make
their own choices and create their own lives”
AS: How refreshing, is what I would say—that the
responsibility for one’s choices, one’s education, one’s life, is left is in their
own hand.
Black Mountain College was
interested in educating human beings to become citizens of the world. So that’s why things like grades, and in many
cases degrees, were not as important as this deeper level of engaging the
world—contributing to it, and being an active citizen
ME: And finally, of this:
“Cooperation - and sometimes conflict - was
generated by the intensity of the community experience.”
AS: Well, I think that’s true. The history of the college confirms
that.
There were periodic skirmishes,
and epic battles. And if you read about
some of those battles there is an admission that people’s egos got the best of
them, where they were engaged in a particular struggle not so much because they
felt they were arguing for the right point of view, but for the struggle itself. And it became important [just] to win.
These are all very human
experiences that we obviously still face today.
But that experience of an intense community can be uplifting, and can
lead to incredible accomplishments that perhaps wouldn’t be possible
otherwise.
It can bring out that absolute
best, and sometimes worst, in a human.
ME: With this year being the 80th
anniversary of the school, what lessons might educational administrators and
educational advocates learn and employ toward enriching and improving their own
learning institutions?
AS: This is just my personal opinion: I think that the direction that education has
gone in recently where it’s all about testing and memorization is just
diametrically opposed to what was going on at Black Mountain College. So I personally feel that maybe getting away
from this current direction, and maybe heading back a little bit more towards
education of the whole person—experimental education, and some of these ideas
that Black Mountain College borrowed from John Dewey—might be an approach that
leads to a more informed and engaged citizenry.
ME: Any last thoughts about the
enduring legacy of the school?
AS: I guess for us, not only
is it an anniversary of Black Mountain College, it’s also the 20th
anniversary of our Museum and Art Center.
We’re pretty proud of that,
and we hope that in what we’re doing the alumni would see our effort as worthy.
The work we do in some sense is
an echo; honoring some of those important ideas and approaches to living that
they carried out at the college.
ME: And to students today,
regardless of where they may be, what would you say to them in the spirit of
learning and growing that they could draw on from the legacy of Black Mountain
College?
AS: To students, I would say the most fruitful
path is often just to follow their interest…and keep following it. Because, that’s going to be the fuel for that
path, which comes from inside, rather than from outside—not somebody telling
them who to be, or where to go
I would say that to follow
that compass driven by interest and passion.
It doesn’t usually lead us astray.
Without the past there can be no present or pathway to the future, and with the knowledge that the telling of history determines who is most enfranchised in the everyday, there is at least one story about the history of art and education in the 20th century deserving a much closer and careful examination.
