From BMC to the Cedar Tavern
“What illicit concoction – what matter of inebriation – what absinthe – lured these healthy young men (and more than a handful of women) who had survived the Depression and war to settle for an uncertain future of fly-by-night jobs and illegal living...Fannie Hillsmith
Fannie Hillsmith, Sea Gate, 1966. Oil on canvas. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of Mary Holden Thompson. Fannie Hillsmith (Faculty Painting 1945 Summer Session) (b.1911-d.2007) Fannie Hillsmith grew up in Boston, the granddaughter of...Molly Gregory
Josef Breitenbach, Molly Gregory woodworking class, n.d. Archival pigment print from a digital scan. Western Regional Archives, Black Mountain College Research Project Collection. Molly Gregory (Apprentice Teacher 1940-1941, Faculty in Woodworking 1941-Summer 1947)...Cynthia Homire
Cynthia Homire, Untitled Sketch, 1989. Pencil on paper. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of the Artist. Alice Sebrell, Cynthia Homire, 2013. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of the Artist....Evelyn Williams Anselevicius
Evelyn Williams Anselevicius, Untitled from the Geodesic Series, ca. 1970s. Tapestry. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of Wes Rousser. Evelyn Williams Anselevicius (Student 1947) (b.1923-d.2003) Evelyn Anselevicius was an internationally...Nataraj Vashi and Praveena Mehta
Nataraj Vashi and Praveena Mehta at BMC. Digital print from archival scan. Western Regional Archives, State Archives of NC. Nataraj Vashi (b. 1924 Gujarat, India – d. 1999) and Praveena Mehta (b. 1923 – d.1992 Mumbai, India) Nataraj Vashi and Praveena...Susan Moore
Susan Moore, A Sketch, n.d. Graphite on paper. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of Susan Carson. Susan Moore (Student 1946 Summer Session) (b.1926-d.2013) Susan Moore grew up in Williamston, NC, and attended Salem College. While at BMC...Elizabeth Jennerjahn
W.P. “Pete” Jennerjahn, Elizabeth Jennerjahn dancing at Black Mountain College, n.d. Archival pigment print from a digital scan. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Elizabeth Jennerjahn (Student 1943-1944, Student Teacher and Resident 1948-1951)...Viola Farber
Marianne Preger-Simon, Merce Cunningham Company: Black Mountain Beginnings, Summer 1953 (Viola Farber at far left), Photographs and drawings (copies). Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of the Artist. Viola Farber (Student 1951 and 1953...Vera B. Williams
January 26 – May 11, 2024
Pat Passlof
Alice Sebrell, Pat Passlof in her studio on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, 2010. Pat Passlof, Eighth House #18, 2003. Oil on linen. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation. Pat...Mary Parks Washington
Mary Parks Washington, Dancing Woman, 1946. Mixed media collage. Collection of Jan Washington. Mary Parks Washington, Untitled (Black Mountain College histcollage), ca.1995. Mixed media / watercolor and newsprint on paper. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum +...Education
It was heady stuff for a girl of 18 to have her own study and to be listened to as an equal… I had a great need to share whatever I was learning with others, but I had no idea how that characteristic would be utilized later on in teaching… or that the...Everyday Life
At eighteen I nearly fainted with wonder at the ferns and moss thick on the paths outside the buildings that led up the mountain to Blue Ridge. I was a girl from rocky Utah. My ‘first love’ and I would climb this trail late at night. I have forgotten him but not the...Performance
At 8:30 tonight John Cage mounted a stepladder and until 10:30 he talked about the relation of music to Zen Buddhism while a movie was shown, dogs ran across the stage barking,12 persons danced without any previous rehearsal, a prepared piano was played, whistles...Women in Craft
The person that had the strongest and most far-reaching effect on me was M.C. Richards. Albers opened my eyes. M.C. opened my mind and I will be forever grateful to her. — Carol Singer Kalbfeld (Student 1947-1948) Question Everything! The Women of Black Mountain...BMC and Beyond
It wasn’t stone, it wasn’t welded steel, it wasn’t traditional sculpture. They thought it was craft, or something else, but not art. They couldn’t define it in the early fifties when I was starting out. I’d get accepted [into a show] and then I’d get a call that I was...The Weaving Workshop
In a world as chaotic as the European world after World War I, any exploratory artistic work had to be experimental in a very comprehensive sense. What had existed had proved to be wrong; everything leading up to it seemed to be wrong, too… At the Bauhaus, those...Betty Brett
Wilfrid G. Hamlin, From the Black Mountain College Journal of Elizabeth B. Hamlin, 1999. Photocopies. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of the Artist. Will Hamlin and Betty Brett were BMC students in the early 1940s. Betty was a poet,...
