Black Mountain College - Definition and Overview

From the time of its founding by John Rice in 1933, Black Mountain College, located near Asheville, North Carolina, was known as one of the leading progressive schools of art in the United States. Started after Rice was fired from a teaching position at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, Black Mountain was experimental by nature and committed to an interdisciplinary approach, attracting a faculty which included many of America's leading artists and poets. Among those who taught there in the 1940s were Josef and Anni Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, Walter Gropius, Lou Harrison, Franz Kline, Jacob Lawrence, Richard Lippold, Charles Olson, M. C. Richards, Ben Shahn, and Jack Tworkov. Guest lecturers included Albert Einstein, Clement Greenberg, and William Carlos Williams.

Among the notable alumni of Black Mountain College are Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Weil, John Chamberlain, Ray Johnson, Kenneth Noland, Joel Oppenheimer, Jonathan Williams, Ruth Asawa, Robert De Niro, Sr., Cy Twombly, Basil King, and Kenneth Snelson. The college ran summer institutes from 1944 till its closing in 1956.