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November Issue
2008
Hickory Museum of Art in Hickory, NC,
Offers Exhibit About Black Mountain College Artists
Robert Motherwell
Jacob Lawrence
The Hickory Museum of Art in Hickory, NC, in conjunction with Lenoir-Rhyne University recently celebrated the 75th year anniversary of Black Mountain College with the presentation of The Spirit of Black Mountain College, on view through Jan. 4, 2009.
Leo Krikorian
Black Mountain College was an experimental institution of higher learning that infused the arts into the curriculum, including dance, poetry, theatre, and visual arts. It grew out of the progressive education movement; placing greater emphasis on individual study and achievement. Students and faculty lived together on campus in a commune environment; everyone helped with construction, farming and chores.
At a time when the arts were being persecuted
overseas by Nazi Germany, many educators came to Black Mountain
College to enjoy a facility where Modern art could be created
and they were safe to teach. The Bauhaus operated in the 1920s
and early 1930s. Modernisn was seen as communist by the Nazi regime
who shut the Bauhaus down; forcing artists to flee the country.
The very idea that an educational institution would promote creative
ideas and stray from basic teachings was defiant and labeled "un-German."
Black Mountain College opened the same year the Bauhaus closed
- 1933 - outside Asheville, NC. Over the course of the 23 years
it was open, Black Mountain College enrolled close to 1,200 students,
only 60 of whom graduated. Though the students never received
grades, the point of the college was to be a place for artistic
expression, creativity, intelligence and hard work. Many of these
students, teachers and the art they created still have an impact
on the world today. Many of their visual and performing artworks
can be experienced in museums, theatres, classrooms, and multi-media
presentations around the world.
The exhibition at Hickory Museum of Art features
151 artworks by 40 artists, most notably Josef and Anni Albers;
Robert Raushenberg; Willem and Elaine DeKooning; Jacob Lawrence;
Robert Motherwell; Buckminster Fuller; Ben Shahn; and Robert De
Niro, Sr.
Josef and Anni Albers came from the Bauhaus to teach at Black
Mountain College. Josef was a renowned mathematician and theorist
who ran the painting program at BMC. His disciplinary approach
to art frustrated some of his students and inspired others. Robert
Rauschenberg was BMC's most famous student. Defying Josef Albers
teachings, Rauschenberg would pick up trash and glue it to his
canvas; this act later helped to define the category of Pop Art.
The exhibition also features a 60 minute documentary in which Black Mountain College students talk about their experiences. Fully Awake: Black Mountain College runs continuously throughout the day.
Join Hickory Museum of Art in celebrating the accomplishments of these individuals who had the unique opportunity to teach, learn and create together through an important interaction with the arts.
For further information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the Museum at 828/327-8576 or visit (www.HickoryArt.org).
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