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 pungency of the fragrant woods or the moonlight on them.
— Jane Slater Marquis (Student 1940-45)
Daily life at BMC could include milking cows, shoveling coal, working on the farm or in the kitchen, intense classroom experiences in art, dance, photography, science, or literature, rehearsal for a play or performance, and then perhaps closing out the day doing homework in the Studies Building or possibly going out with friends for a beer at Roy’s or Peek’s Tavern.
Notable artworks and ephemera
Exhibited in the Spring 2020 exhibition Question Everything! The Women of Black Mountain College.
Ati Gropius Forberg Johansen (Student 1943-1946) (b.1926-d.2014), Footnotes on the year 1944, ca. 1995. Ink on paper. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of the Artist.
Mary Parks Washington (Student 1946 Summer Session) (b.1924-d.2019), Untitled (Black Mountain College histcollage), ca.1995. Mixed media / watercolor and newsprint on paper. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of the Artist.
Nell Goldsmith Heyns (Student 1942-1944) (b.1924-d.2011), Jane “Slats” Slater by Lake Eden, ca. 1943-1944. Archival pigment print from a digital scan of a color slide. Courtesy of Western Regional Archives, State of North Carolina.
Nell Goldsmith Heyns (Student 1942-1944) (b.1924-d.2011), Self-portrait at Studies Building, ca. 1943 -1944. Archival pigment print from a digital scan of a color slide. Courtesy of Western Regional Archives, State of North Carolina.
Nell Goldsmith Heyns (Student 1942-1944) (b.1924-d.2011), Mimi French and Marilyn Bauer, ca. 1943-1944. Archival pigment print from a digital scan of a color slide. Courtesy of Western Regional Archives, State of North Carolina.
Research Resources
The Journal of Black Mountain College Studies
The Western Regional Archives Black Mountain College Digital Collection
Black Mountain Days by Michael Rumaker (BMCM+AC, 2003)
Black Mountain College: An Exploration in Community by Martin Duberman
Sprouted Seeds: An Anthology of Personal Accounts (out of print, available in full in our Research Library)
The Arts at Black Mountain College by Mary Emma Harris
Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College (ICA Boston)