October 16, 2021 | BMCM+AC {120 College Street} – Presented as part of the Faith in Arts Institute. Thomas Moore’s performance of solo piano works by John Cage featured compositions from the 1950s through the 1990s, including the often discussed but infrequently performed 4’33” — Cage’s “silent” piece of 1952 — as well as Water Music (1952), selections from the Etudes Australes (1974–75), and One5 (1990).
October 15, 2021 | UNC Asheville + Zoom | Presented as part of the Faith in Arts Institute. Guggenheim Fellow and Bessie Award recipient Kimberly Bartosik guides us through clips and discusses the process around the creation of I hunger for you, her choreographic work focusing on the need for faith and the collective desire for transformation. Following the screening and discussion, Dance Scholar/Choreographer Christopher Rasheem Macmillan joined Kimberly in a rich conversation around their shared passion for questioning, through artistic practice, embodied pathways towards faith within a critical and compassionate understanding of our contemporary moment.
October 14, 2021 | BMCM+AC {120 College Street} – Presented as part of the Faith in Arts Institute. Film screening and talk with Director Marie Cochran. “Testify, Beyond Place” pays homage to the Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church as well as its relationship to Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC. The year the film was produced in 2021, marked the 85th anniversary of the church demolition and gravesite removal to make way for the expansion of the campus.
October 14, 2021 | Haywood Street Congregation – Presented as part of the Faith in Arts Institute. At the intersection of poverty and portraiture, Theirs is the Kingdom follows the rare creation of a contemporary fresco mural inside the sanctuary of a small church in Asheville, NC. This is a painting not of the rich and powerful, but of people battling homelessness, addiction, and mental illness. From first sketch to final unveiling, the viewer witnesses the difficulties of this ancient artistic technique while also meeting an ensemble cast of complex characters.
May 2nd, 2026 at 12PM | BMCM+AC
Various Dates Feb – May 2026 | Lake Eden
May 29, 2026 at 5:30PM | BMCM+AC
October 14, 2021 | UNC Asheville + Zoom – Presented as part of the Faith in Arts Institute. The arts were considered forms of Ch’an (Zen) Buddhist practice in ancient China, and mountain landscape played an important part in that practice. Hinton outlines Ch’an insight. Then, starting from that understanding, he discusses how Ch’an shaped the arts in ancient China, and how it migrated to America in the twentieth century, where it shaped poetry and visual-art in fundamental ways, a process in which John Cage and Black Mountain played a major role.
October 14, 2021 | UNC Asheville + Zoom – Presented as part of the Faith in Arts Institute. This presentation by Rachel Elizabeth Harding explores thematic parallels in the work of painters John Biggers (1924-2001) and Daniel Minter (1961). Separated by more than a generation, and each with his own unique professional trajectory, these creative artists share Southern roots, diasporic visions, and sensibilities grounded in both the materiality and the mysticism of African American life.
June 21 – June 27, 2021 | The Hop Ice Cream mixes up a new batch of Dymaxion Chocolate Ephemeralization, a celebration of Black Mountain College’s very own Buckminster Fuller! Sales benefitted BMCM+AC.
October 13, 2021 | BMCM+AC {120 College Street} + Zoom – Presented as part of the Faith in Arts Institute. It is time to set aside old assumptions about the antagonism between art and religion and look again with fresh eyes. In this lecture, Aaron Rosen, a leading scholar on religion and contemporary art as well as a practicing curator and critic, explores some of the key ways in which artists today are reframing how we think about religion and spirituality and driving new approaches to ethical issues including climate care and racial justice.
September 30, 2021 | Streaming – Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel is Scott Burland (Theremin) and Frank Schultz (Lap Steel guitar). Burland and Schultz bring their mesmerizing duet to BMCM+AC for a live recorded session in the gallery. Presented in conjunction with the Fall 2021 exhibition Don’t Blame it on ZEN: The Way of John Cage & Friends.
Released May 16, 2022
September 2, 2021 | Streaming – Chicago-based percussionist Tim Daisy and bassoonist, improviser, and composer Katherine Young (a recent Atlanta, GA transplant) bring their two-decades-long collaborative experience to the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center for a live recording of improvised duets. Investigating a wide array of sonic territory from laser-focused pointillism to extremes in density and texture, Katherine and Tim aim to use the art of listening combined with their shared performative experience to create a unique blend of sound-making, taking full advantage of the unique instrumentation involved.
Released May 16, 2022
Released April 19, 2022
August 27, 2021 | 103.3 Asheville FM – Each month, a BMC Radio Artist’s work will be featured in various programs on Asheville FM with an exclusive interview kicking off their featured month. At the completion of the broadcasts, a culminating listening session will be held at Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center to celebrate the work of the five radio artists: Mike Holmes (Nostalgianoid), Thom Nguyen, Cilla Vee, Zazie Productions, and Michael Hatch. Presented in collaboration with Asheville FM and Make Noise.
August 19, 2021 | Streaming – “The Long Way Home,” a new solo work by Christopher-Rasheem Mcmillan, poses a way of contending with the Black body as a composite body, one that is connected to, affirms, and disrupts the archive and Historiography. Through this solo dance performance, McMillan tracks the Merce Cunningham technique through diaspora, emphasizing that the diaspora is never the homeland: it’s never home, it’s always somehow both exile in migration and in travel; different from, yet somehow always in dialogue with, its genesis.
Jonathan Williams was a master of translating sound onto the page. In many of his poems, he inspires the question, “What do the sounds of a place look like?”
103.3 Asheville FM, Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, and Make Noise announce an opportunity for artists living in Western North Carolina (WNC) to create new short works for broadcast on the radio. We invite artists in WNC to propose projects that reflect the experimental and innovative spirit of Black Mountain College. Artists are encouraged to take risks. Projects should be between 3-5 minutes long and no more than 12 months old. New work is strongly encouraged. The work does not have to be music. Projects can include any sound recording, cellphone recording, field recording, meditation, movement score, text score, sound collage, spoken word, audio art, experimental DJ work, etc.. The LOI deadline is July 20, 2022.
