The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center announces ReVIEWING Black Mountain College 5: Shaping Craft + Design to be held October 11-13, 2013 at the Reuter Center on the UNC Asheville campus.

The 5th annual ReVIEWING Black Mountain College conference will encourage new ways of thinking about the role and impact of Black Mountain College on developing craft and design movements in America and internationally. Submissions are encouraged that expand our understanding of Black Mountain College as it relates to craft and design as well as the educational model implemented by the college's founders and faculty. The conference fee is $70.00 and includes an annual membership to the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center.

Call for Papers

Paper or Session Proposal Form Word Doc

Paper or Session Proposal Form PDF

Christopher Benfey, Conference Keynote Speaker is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English and Acting Dean of Faculty at Mount Holyoke, where he has taught since 1989. He was educated at the Putney School, Earlham College, Guilford College, and Harvard (from which he holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature). He has held fellowships from the Danforth Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies. In 2012, Benfey was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation's most prestigious honorary societies. A prolific journalist, Benfey served as the long-time art critic for the online magazine Slate, and is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Republic, among many other publications. His family memoir, Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay; Reflections on Art, Family, and Survival, was published in the spring of 2012 by Penguin. The book explores strands of Benfey’s family involving brick-making, pottery traditions in North Carolina, and the pioneering educational institution of Black Mountain College. A well-known scholar of Emily Dickinson, Benfey is the author of four highly regarded books about the American Gilded Age. These include A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade, which won both the 2009 Christian Gauss Award of Phi Beta Kappa and the Ambassador Book Award.He is also the author of The Double Life of Stephen Crane (1992); Degas in New Orleans (1997); and The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan (2003). For the prestigious Library of America editions, Benfey has edited both The American Writings of Lafcadio Hearn and the complete poems of Stephen Crane. His edition of essays on the Iliad by Simone Weil and Rachel Bespaloff appeared as War and the Iliad (NYRB Classics, 2005). Benfey's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, the Paris Review, and Ploughshares.

Jenni Sorkin, Conference Featured Speaker is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History and Critical Theory at the University of Houston. She is currently completing a book manuscript, titled Live Form: Craft as Participation, which examines the confluence of gender, artistic labor, and the history of post-war ceramics from 1945 to 1975. She holds a PhD in the History of Art from Yale University and a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. From 2010-2011, she was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. In 2004, she was the recipient of the Art Journal Award, given by the College Art Association.

Ulrich Schwarz, Conference Featured Speaker is Professor of Visual Communication and Vice Dean at University of the Arts Berlin and a Managing Partner of Bertron Schwarz Frey, a design firm focused on Museography, Exhibition Design and Information Design. He is the author of publications such as "Space, Time, Characters" and "Museography and Exhibition Design" as well as contributions to "Information Graphics" and "Information Design Source Book".

Photo Credits:
Mary Caroline (MC) Richards, Alchemical Form, 1961, Stoneware. 22 x 6 x 6". Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center Collection. Gift of the Estate of Jonathan Williams.
Lawrence Kocher, Bent Plywood Chair, 1942, Plywood and Screws, 25 x 18 x 24". Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center Collection. Gift of Sandra Kocher.

ReVIEWING Black Mountain College 4
September 28-30, 2012
Asheville, North Carolina

Thematic Focus: Looking Forward at Buckminster Fuller's Legacy

Co-sponsored by The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, the Buckminster Fuller Institute, the University of North Carolina at Asheville and the UNC Asheville Howerton Distinguished Professor in the Humanities

Schedule
Bios + Abstracts
Design Science Day
Looking Forward Exhibition
Buckminster Fuller Play at NC Stage
To Volunteer Click Here
Location
Parking and Access
Conference Hotel Info
Sponsors
Sponsorship
Press Release

Keynote Speaker: Allegra Fuller Snyder, daughter of Buckminster Fuller; Director Emerita of the Buckminster Fuller Institute; Professor Emerita of Dance and Dance Ethnology, UCLA

Featured Speaker: Jason McLennan, CEO of the Cascadia Green Building Council; author of the Living Building Challenge, winner of the 2012 Buckminster Fuller Challenge

Featured Speaker: Joseph D. Clinton, President of Clinton International Design Consultants; Synergetics Collaborative; associate of Buckminster Fuller

Featured Speaker: Mel Chin, conceptual visual artist

Featured Speaker: David McConville, media artist; President of the Buckminster Fuller Institute

The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, along with the Buckminster Fuller Institute and the University of North Carolina at Asheville, will present a 3-day conference exploring Buckminster Fuller's Legacy, including his forward-thinking work during the two summers he was at Black Mountain College (1948 & 1949), his innovative work in architecture, engineering and design science in the decades after BMC, and the work of those who are carrying his ideas forward into the future. In addition to panels and presentations, the conference will include an experiential Design Science Day held outdoors on the UNC Asheville campus on Saturday, September 29th.

Weekend cost for the conference:
$15 for BMC Museum + Arts Center members and students w/ID
$50 for non-members (includes BMC Museum + Arts Center membership)
Free for UNCA students, faculty & staff
Design Science Day - Free

In conjunction with the conference, the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center will collaborate with the Buckminster Fuller Institute to present an exhibition that explores the new generation of Fuller-inspired thinkers, artists and problem-solvers via The Buckminster Fuller Challenge, an award given annually by BFI to a project that addresses a planetary problem with an elegant, whole systems-based solution. The exhibition will also include some of Fuller's own inventive designs for solutions to the many needs he saw on "Spaceship Earth."

ReVIEWING Black Mountain College 3
An International Conference

October 7-9, 2011
Thematic Focus: John Cage's Circle of Influence

Keynote Speaker:
Laura Kuhn, Director of The John Cage Trust

Click Here for more information.
BMC International Conference 2011 Schedule
Press Release

Co-sponsored by The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, the University of North Carolina at Asheville and The John Cage Trust.

An International Conference
October 8 -10, 2010

Keynote Speaker: Kenneth Snelson

Pictures (Set One)
Pictures (Set Two)

BMC International Conference 2010 Schedule

The legacy of Black Mountain College continues to influence contemporary culture in multiple realms. This conference aims to investigate its history as well as the multiple paths of influence, actual and possible, identifiable in the contemporary world and beyond.  Click Here for more info.

Co-hosted by the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and The University Of North Carolina Asheville.