FLASHBACK: Black Mountain College: Art Innovation and Education (PART 2)

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

– 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 80^th 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 20^th 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.

FLASHBACK: Black Mountain College: Art Innovation and Education

Author's Note:  In 2013 I wrote an article about the 80th anniversary of Black Mountain College, which coincided with the 20th anniversary of Black Mountain College + Museum.  Reprinted below is the first half of that article, which includes a feature interview with Alice Sebrell, Program Director, Black Mountain College + Museum:

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THE ETERNITY GROUP

– NOVEMBER 28, 2013 
POSTED IN: ARCHITECTURE, ART, FEATURE,HISTORY, UPDATES

Black Mountain College: Art Innovation and Education

By Max Eternity

“BMC was a crazy and magical place”

Lyle Bonge, Student 1947-48

How one responds to crisis often determines and confirms tragedy or triumph. Surely, John Rice knew of this when he led the charge to open an innovative new college in Asheville, North Carolina, some 80 years ago, called Black Mountain College.

“Black Mountain College was interested in educating human beings to become citizens of the world” says Alice Sebrell, “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.”

The college is now a museum, and Sebrell is its Program Director.

Founded in 1933 by John A. Rice, the concept of the Black Mountain College drew from the philosophical principles of education reform as realized by American intellectual and psychologist, John Dewey.

As the school was being born, simultaneously Nazism was swelling in Europe and the United States was adrift in the Great Depression. Responding to the US crisis, and in his visionary commitment to uplift the economy and the morale of the American people, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Public Works Arts Project—a government program for artists that was later folded into and expanded on in the creation of the Works Projects Administration (WPA).

In the US, Roosevelt was championing the arts, while in Germany Adolph Hitler shuttered the Bauhaus in Berlin, Germany—a small art and design school founded by Walter Gropius that ultimately produced many of the world’s greatest creative, including Marcel Breuer, Joseph and Annie Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, Lily Reich and Mies Van Der Rohe. Among other things, shuttering the Bauhaus signaled the end of Germany’s Weimar Republic renaissance.

Along with Jews and those with alternative gender and sexual identities, Nazi Germany launched a brutal oppression against European artists and intellectuals who did not conform to the ideals of the state, and thus were deemed degenerate.

Of those who escaped, many of Europe’s best and brightest became students and teachers at choice schools in the United States, including Walter Gropius, who became department head of the architecture graduate program at Harvard University.

Josef and Anni Albers, who both taught at the Bauhaus, were subsequently on the faculty at Black Mountain College.

In the 1940’s, Albert Einstein was on the Board of Directors at Black MountainCollege. And while Jim Crow apartheid laws were being fully enforced throughout North Carolina and much of the nation, Black Mountain College included African-American artist, Jacob Lawrence—who is best known for “The [Great] Migration series,” which tells an epic visual story of the Black exodus from the South to the North—in its faculty.

Though lesser known and smaller in size, many art historians consider Black Mountain College a parallel and peer to the Bauhaus, as it was equally as progressive and innovative as the Bauhaus. And during its 24 year lifespan, the school attracted and produced some of the greatest intellectual and creative talents of the 20th century. A partial listing of these figures include Josef and Anni Albers, Jacob Lawrence, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Kenneth Noland, Franz Kline, Arthur Penn, Ruth Asawa, M.C. Richards, Francine du Plessix Gray, Robert Motherwell, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley and many others.

Black Mountain College closed in 1957, yet decades later, and in this new century, the creative spirit and genius of Black Mountain College continues to inform of humanity’s greatest potential in art and education.

Black Mountain College (Asheville North, Carolina)

“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“ says Sebrell, and in the following interview, Sebrell speaks further about the inspiration and lessons learned from Black Mountain College:

Max Eternity: What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about Black Mountain College?

Alice Sebrell (AS): I think is probably a visual…because I’ve worked on so many projects that have to do with the visual aspect of the college—the artist and their work, or photographs of the college, or just walking the properties.

ME: And is there a common thread in this visual imagery?

AS: What comes up is the longing to have been able to experience it in person, rather than second hand. For me it’s more of a yearning for what appears to have been an incredibly intense, creative and charged experience for everyone who lived through, and those sorts of experiences don’t come along every day.

(... to be continued)