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FAITH IN ARTS: A CONVERSATION WITH AVIYA KUSHNER
July 7, 2021 | Streaming – A conversation and reading with author Aviya Kushner. Kushner’s debut poetry collection, Wolf Lamb Bomb, revives and reimagines the Book of Isaiah in an intimate conversation between woman and prophet. In the aftermath of September 11th, ongoing violence in the Middle East, and resurgent antisemitism, Kushner reflects on a Biblical understanding of humanity and justice.
BMC RADIO: PIERS GELLY
June 30, 2021 | Soundcloud – Preview an exciting new project, led by BMCM+AC’s first Active Archive resident podcaster Piers Gelly. Gelly, a collaborator on such programs as 99% Invisible and creator/host of Cellar Door, will present a sneak peek at a new Black Mountain College podcast, currently in development. Gelly will be in conversation with Black Mountain scholars Julie Levin Caro, Thomas Frank, and archivist Heather South, breaking down preconceived notions of BMC’s history and setting the stage for the eight-part documentary podcast exploring Black Mountain College as a forerunner in interdisciplinary arts, experimental education, and community-building.
PERFORMANCE: THOM NGUYEN
June 24, 2021 | Streaming – A fully improvised percussion set from Asheville-based musician Thom Nguyen, streaming from the BMCM+AC space using a drum kit and various percussion elements, in the spirit of Nguyen’s recently released album “Exits.”
PERSPECTIVES: MARIPOSA LAND PORT OF ENTRY
June 23, 2021 | Streaming – In this presentation and conversation, members of the design team expand on the principles that guided their process, discuss the human experience of traveling through Mariposa Land Port of Entry, and emphasize the ways in which public art, architecture, and landscape design can offer connection and nurture relationships across borders.
Spaceship Earth: A Global Community
Masato Nakagawa, students with first large-scale Geodesic Dome, built under the instruction of R. Buckminster Fuller. BMC Summer Session 1949. Western Regional Archives, State Archives of North Carolina.In the words of the philosopher and architect R. Buckminster...
Figurative Abstraction: Constructing Identity
Helen M. Post (b. 1907 Bloomfiend, NJ; d. 1978), Xanti Schawinsky’s Spectodrama (digital print). Western Regional Archives, State Archives of NC.The language of abstraction expanded throughout the 20th century as artists sought new ways to tell their stories and...
New Citizens: Exchanging Oppression for Freedom
Ingeborg Lauterstein (b. 1923 Vienna, Austria; d. 2012 Rockport, MA), Portrait of Sewell Sillman, c. 1948-49. Oil on masonite. Courtesy of The Johnson Collection.Much of Black Mountain College’s students, faculty, and staff carried with them the traumas of WWII, the...
PERSPECTIVES: SOUTHERN EQUALITY STUDIOS
June 16, 2021 | Streaming – A conversation with artists Liz Williams and Al Murray of Southern Equality Studios, a program of the Campaign for Southern Equality. A layered installation by SES was featured in our exhibition I AM A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD. The works “You’re Welcome” and “Building a Better Table” invite participants to consider their role in creating a more equitable world, holding space for the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities.
CALL FOR ARTISTS: BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE RADIO ART
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 June 21, 2021.
BMCM+AC awarded NEH collections grant
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center has been awarded $50,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop a pilot project creating online access to the museum’s Permanent Collection of over 4,000 artworks and ephemera from the famed liberal arts college and experimental community.
Performances at BMCM+AC
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FAITH IN ARTS: A CONVERSATION WITH CHRISTOPHER-RASHEEM MCMILLAN
June 9, 2021 | Streaming – A conversation with performance-related artist and scholar Christopher-Rasheem McMillan on the intersections of faith and arts. He has a joint appointment between Dance and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. His interests concern choreography in an expanded field, something that he has approached through experimental practices and creative processes in a multiplicity of formats and expressions. He uses video, performance, photography, and oral storytelling to explore themes of race, memory, queer desire, religion, personal and public mythology.
FAITH IN ARTS: A CONVERSATION WITH CHARLES HALLISEY
May 26, 2021 | Streaming – A Faith in Arts conversation with Charles Hallisey, Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures at Harvard Divinity School. His research centers on Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, Pali language and literature, Buddhist ethics, and literature in Buddhist culture. His most recent book is Therigatha: Poems of the First Buddhist Women (Harvard University Press, 2015). He is currently working on a book project entitled “Flowers on the Tree of Poetry: The Moral Economy of Literature in Buddhist Sri Lanka.”
PERFORMANCE: TWO WAY STREET + NEVERMIND THE NOISE
May 13, 2021 | Streaming – Performance by the Asheville-based duo Two Way Street of new music composed by members of Nevermind the Noise, a collective of graduate student composers from New York University.
PERSPECTIVES: ONICAS GADDIS
May 12, 2021 | Streaming – A conversation with Onicas Gaddis, featured artist in the exhibition I AM A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD and student of BMC alumna Sarah Carlisle Towery. We will discuss Gaddis’ painting Black Mountain (2020), his style of “Spiritual Expressionism,” the way that his identity is expressed and has evolved through his practice, and how his time spent with Towery at the Alabama Art Colony changed the trajectory of his life.
BOOK TALK: “A BETTER LIFE FOR THEIR CHILDREN”
May 5, 2021 | Streaming – A conversation with award-winning photographer Andrew Feiler and Executive Director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, Brent Leggs, on Feiler’s newly published book of photographs and remembrances “A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools That Changed America” (UGA Press, 2021).
OPTION SERIES: BMCM+AC / TYONDAI BRAXTON + GRACE VILLAMIL
April 26, 2021 | Streaming – OPTION is a weekly music salon curated by Chicago musicians Andrew Clinkman, Tim Daisy, and Ken Vandermark. Its programming explores contemporary perspectives on improvisation and composition in a ‘salon’ format, enabling local, national, and international artists to publicly discuss their practice and ideas as well as perform.
PERSPECTIVES: ALMA ALLORO
April 14, 2021 | Streaming – A conversation with multidisciplinary artist Alma Alloro on her recent web-native commission for BMCM+AC, 10-03.space. Alma Alloro is a Berlin-based artist originally from Tel Aviv. Her works often have a dual existence in digital media and hand-crafted formats, exploring the possibilities and limitations of handmade objects in our digitally-oriented world.
PERFORMANCE: MARIO GALEANO TORO
April 7, 2021 | Streaming – Presented in partnership with Make Noise – Streaming premiere of a new electronic performance “Falla Común del Béndix” (Common Failure of the Bendix), by Colombian composer, arranger, and producer Mario Galeano Toro. Galeano Toro has dedicated the past 20 years to finding new paths for Latin-American musical identities through influential tropicalist projects, ranging from roots to experimental.
FAITH IN ARTS: A CONVERSATION WITH KRISHA MARCANO
March 24, 2021 | Streaming – A Faith in Arts conversation with Krisha Marcano, Martha Graham dancer and star in the first principal role as Squeak in the original production of “The Color Purple.” She has taught dance and performance for numerous institutions and is now professor of Musical Theater and Dance, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and Entrepreneurship at UNC School of the Arts.