International Conference
October 8 -10, 2010
Artists, Performers, Academics Explore Persistent Power of BMC’s Radical Experiment in Higher Education
Returning to the source of artistic and cultural innovation, presenters accepted for the 2nd Re-Viewing Black Mountain College conference will provide new insights into this historic institution. From October 8 – 10, the conference will screen films, host musical and dramatic productions, highlight new and established scholars, and exhibit Mail Art contributed from around the globe on the UNC Asheville campus. Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center will host the opening reception in its gallery at 56 Broadway, featuring work by acclaimed sculptor and BMC student Kenneth Snelson. Snelson will give a keynote address on Saturday evening at UNC Asheville where most conference presentations will take place. The conference is co-sponsored by the BMCM+AC and UNC Asheville.
The co-sponsors invite the public to take this opportunity to discover more about the college that nurtured such talents as Kenneth Snelson, Ray Johnson, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Cage. Scheduled performances feature the work of John Cage and a play surveying the entire history of BMC. Two documentaries will be shown, one exploring the ideas of Paul Goodman, social critic and philosopher of education, and the other examining the educational impact of BMC. Various speakers will discuss the poetry of Charles Olson and Joel Oppenheimer, while others will focus on artists and educators associated with the college.
Keynote Speaker: Kenneth Snelson
Kenneth Snelson is a major American sculptor with work in collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., museums in Holland, Australia, Japan and Germany and public art commissions all over the world. He also holds several U.S. patents. Snelson was a student at Black Mountain College in the summers of 1948 and 1949, where he worked closely with Buckminster Fuller, and where he discovered the principle known as “tensegrity”. Known primarily for his gravity-defying sculptures, Snelson is also an accomplished photographer with a particular interest in panoramic photographs. The recent publication Kenneth Snelson: Forces Made Visible traces this important artist’s five-decade career.
