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, Ray Johnson, Hugo Kauder, Ursula Mamlok, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor, Alma Stone Williams, Stan Vanderbeek, and Stefan Wolpe, alongside movements like Bauhaus, Dada, and Fluxus. The exhibition will feature historical and contemporary works, interactive installations, performances, and immersive experiences that bring the past into conversation with the present.

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. 

Music and performance were integral to life at Black Mountain College, with concerts and student productions woven throughout its history. The college’s summer music institutes, beginning in 1944, attracted luminaries like Heinrich Jalowetz and Edward Lowinsky, both affiliated with Arnold Schoenberg’s circle. Lowinsky’s focus on Early Music enriched BMC’s program, fostering an in-depth exploration of Renaissance polyphony. The college was also ahead of its time in desegregation, with Alma Stone Williams, the first African American student, studying music and participating in the inaugural 1944 Summer Music Institute. That summer also hosted the largest gathering celebrating Schoenberg’s work.

Ursula Mamlok attended Black Mountain College in 1944, marking a pivotal moment in both her life and the college’s history. The summer institute, launched in response to the challenges of World War II, gathered students and faculty from across the country for an intensive exchange of ideas. Emphasizing a democratic way of life and physical development—described in the Black Mountain College Bulletin as vital for building moral and physical stamina during such trying times—the program provided a rich environment for Mamlok to explore new musical languages and philosophies. During her time at BMC, she encountered progressive musicians like Ernst Krenek, Eduard Steuermann, Rudolf Kolisch, and Roger Sessions, whose influence would significantly shape her own musical voice in the years to come.

One of BMC’s most significant interdisciplinary collaborations was The Glyph Exchange (1951), uniting choreographer Katherine Litz, composer Lou Harrison, painter Ben Shahn, and poet Charles Olson. Rooted in Olson’s studies of Mayan glyphs, the work embodied BMC’s commitment to artistic experimentation. This lineage extended from Bauhaus influences through the Light, Sound, Movement Workshop of the 1940s, culminating in Cage’s Theater Piece No. 1.

In 1952, John Cage’s Theater Piece No. 1, held in the BMC dining hall, became a groundbreaking event. Featuring David Tudor on piano, poetry readings by M.C. Richards and Charles Olson, a dance by Merce Cunningham, and Robert Rauschenberg’s white paintings suspended from the ceiling, it solidified BMC’s role as a cornerstone of avant-garde performance. BMC’s legacy carried into the 1960s and 1970s, influencing movements like Fluxus, Judson Dance Theater, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, which was founded at BMC in 1953. The college also nurtured the work of notable figures like Stefan Wolpe, whose compositions, shaped by Taoism and responding to Cage’s indeterminacy, embodied BMC’s innovative spirit. Wolpe served as the college’s music director from 1952 to 1956. A German-born American composer, Wolpe’s work spanned interdisciplinary modernism, with ties to movements as diverse as the Bauhaus, Berlin agitprop theater, the kibbutz movement, the Eighth Street Artists’ Club, and the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music.

Points in Space aims to bridge the past and present, ensuring BMC’s interdisciplinary spirit continues to inspire new generations. Through performance-integrated exhibitions and public programs, the exhibition will foster a dynamic dialogue between historical and contemporary artistic practices, expanding the reach and relevance of BMC’s radical approach to art, education, and community engagement.

Points in Space: Performance at Black Mountain College is organized by Jeff Arnal, curator, and Adolfo Alzuphar, curatorial assistant.