Points in Space: Performance at Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center
September 5, 2025 – January 10, 2026
Ann Hamilton, (ghost . . . a border act • video), 2000. Courtesy of Ann Hamilton Studio.
Helen M. Post, Xanti Schawinsky’s “Spectodrama: Play, Life, Illusion”, 1937. Courtesy of Western Regional Archives, State Archives of North Carolina.
Black Mountain College’s interdisciplinary and collaborative philosophy fostered groundbreaking time-based experiments across disciplines, significantly influencing performance, theater, film, music, dance, and visual art worldwide. Points in Space: Performance at Black Mountain College will feature visual and time-based artworks that echo BMC’s innovative spirit from 1933 to 1957. BMC was a nexus of avant-garde activity, fostering innovation through collaboration and experiential learning. The exhibition will highlight key events and figures, such as John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Lou Harrison, Roland Hayes, Xanti Schawinsky, David Tudor, Alma Stone Williams, and Stefan Wolpe, and the influence of movements like Bauhaus, Dada, and Fluxus. The exhibition will also feature historical and contemporary works, interactive installations, performances, and immersive experiences.
Renowned for its avant-garde ethos, BMC soon became a hub for pioneering musical experimentation influenced significantly by European émigrés fleeing Nazi Germany. Xanti Schawinsky, who studied under Oskar Schlemmer at the Bauhaus, connected the undercurrent of Bauhaus theater to BMC through theater classes. In 1948, John Cage orchestrated a festival celebrating Erik Satie, marking BMC’s embrace of Satie’s radical ideas alongside Cage’s own avant-garde compositions inspired by Zen Buddhism like “4’33.” BMC’s environment nurtured other notable figures like Stefan Wolpe, whose compositions, influenced by Taoism and responding to Cage’s indeterminacy, exemplified BMC’s innovative spirit.
Music and performance were integral parts of life at BMC, with concerts and student productions occurring throughout its history. The college’s summer music institutes, starting in 1944, hosted luminaries like Heinrich Jalowetz and Edward Lowinsky, both associated with Arnold Schoenberg’s circle. Lowinsky’s focus on Early Music enriched BMC’s program, fostering a deep exploration of Renaissance polyphony. BMC was early to desegregate with Alma Stone Williams, the first African American student who studied music and participated in the inaugural 1944 Summer Music Institute, which included the largest gathering celebrating Schoenberg’s work. Roland Hayes, the first world-renowned African-American classical singer, played a concert at BMC in 1945 and taught at the Summer Institute.
In the summer of 1952, John Cage organized a collaborative event in the Dining Hall that would later be known as “Theatre Piece No. 1.” Widely regarded as the first Happening, this performance featured David Tudor on piano, poetry readings by M.C. Richards and Charles Olson, a lecture by Cage, a dance by Merce Cunningham, and Robert Rauschenberg’s white paintings hanging from the ceiling. This landmark event cemented Black Mountain College’s reputation as a central hub for avant-garde performance. The 1960s and 1970s saw the emergence of numerous performance movements from BMC, including Fluxus, Judson Memorial Church, and the groundbreaking Merce Cunningham Company, founded at BMC in 1953.
Curated by Jeff Arnal, Executive Director