Wednesday December 18th, 2024 at 7pm
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center {120 College Street}
Free and Open to All
Built on more than a decade’s worth of deep, original archival research, The Farm at Black Mountain College constitutes a comprehensive new history of Black Mountain College. By focusing on the farm, the exhibition sidesteps the popular paradigm of approaching BMC through its famous faculty and students, and instead offers a new cast of characters, one that includes mostly students, women, and farmers. It spotlights the importance of collaboration, both on campus among students, faculty, and faculty families, and in the community with farmers and organizations in nearby cities and towns. Finally, the exhibition shows what happens when communal living is no longer communal, and offers the first ever detailed account of the fall of the college, a dramatic and often dangerous story.
Presented in BMCM+AC’s lower gallery, the contemporary installation DEER FREAKS…and decoys explores the hyper-natural forces of attraction and repulsion informing our interactions with the landscapes we inhabit. From fence rows to scare-crows, DEER FREAKS documents the creative ways people propagate, shape, lure, and protect in their environments. This multi-media, multi-layered project of Swannatopia responds to the themes of The Farm at Black Mountain College.
David Silver is a professor of environmental studies and urban agriculture at the University of San Francisco (USF), where he has been since 2006. At USF, he teaches classes in urban ag, hyperlocal food systems, and food, culture, and storytelling, and serves as faculty advisor for the USF Community Garden, USF Food Pantry, and the USF Seed Library. Fiercely interdisciplinary, David has taught and published in multiple fields, including American studies, communication, environmental studies, internet studies, media studies, and urban agriculture. For over a decade, he has been researching the farm and food at Black Mountain College, resulting in multiple articles, book chapters, and, in September 2024, The Farm at Black Mountain College, his book co-published by Atelier Éditions and Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, and an exhibition, co-curated with Bruce Johansen, at BMCM+AC.