Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

What distinguished the teaching methodology advocated at Black Mountain College of North Carolina (1933-1956) was the level to which the arts were elevated and the idea of using creative experiences to enhance all areas of academic interest and create active learners who were “fully awake”. Every student experienced the arts, whether they were an aspiring artist or scientist. John Andrew Rice, one of the founders of the college, identified with artists whom he felt sought to expand understanding with creativity and experience, rather than to ascertain knowledge through control and experimentation. Art was a discipline that helped one to see, to learn, to listen, to fail, and to make choices. Rice’s strong methodological bias for experience in and out of the college classroom was summarized in a later statement: “To read a play is good, to see a play is better, but to act in a play…is to realize a subtle relationship between sound and movement.” The college’s faculty, students and speakers included some of the greatest artists and thinkers of its time: Anni and Josef Albers, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, John Dewy, Buckminster Fuller, Walter Gropius, Langston Hughes, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Charles Olson, and Albert Einstein. Black Mountain College positioned all life as art. The 1933 college catalogue described how the individual was fostered: “The student…by being sensitized to movement, form, sound…gets a firmer control of himself and his environment.”

Presenters

Siu Challons-Lipton
Executive Director and Professor of Art History, Department of Art, Design and Music, Queens Univeristy of Charlotte, North Carolina, United States