Text by by Bianca Mońa, Associate Curator for Exhibitions and Education
The old Studies Building at Black Mountain College campus overlooked Lake Eden. Theodore and Barbara Dreier Collection, Western Regional Archives, State Archives of North Carolina
Last Art School, a project by Lindsey White (on view in the 205 Hudson Gallery through November 22) is a legacy project by which art educators, artists, educators, students, and community consider, co-create, and through self-determination re-imagine pedagogical systems and ways of being. How can we together implement utopian, problem-solving to usher in solutions with far reaching possibilities? Last Art School embodies thinking similar to other visionary teaching philosophies of The Bauhaus, and The Black School. The themes this project explores and advocates for – mutual aid, community care, and artistic autonomy – are not foreign or impossible. As a matter-of-fact it has been done before, in the United States and beyond. Black Mountain College, a small liberal arts college, from 1933 to 1957, nestled in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina, was founded on the principles of experimentation, the application of thinking into doing, transdisciplinary influence, and distribution of authority.
Black Mountain College had no board of directors and was thus able to build its academic courses based on direction of faculty and students, cooperatively. Black Mountain opened in September 1933 with 26 students and 13 faculty members, including Josef and Anni Albers, artists from The Bauhaus, another inspiring art school, located in Germany. With its focus on unbounded knowledge exchange, playing, and relationship building, Black Mountain College attracted supreme talent – educators and students included Ruth Asawa, Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham.
John Rice, founder of Black Mountain College, centered art within education because of his belief that art allows for observation, judgment, and action—skills that are transferable into any form of work by any kind of person. By taking up White’s challenge to explore and exercise these qualities, creative practitioners today can work towards understanding—and perhaps revitalizing—higher education, as it is currently redefining itself in the midst of another wave of culture wars.
Thoughout the Fall semester, we, a multi-ethnic, socio-economically diverse and intergenerational community that makes up Hunter College and New York City, will have the remarkable challenge of pondering and problem-solving our current challenges, a herculean feat most fitting for a place of higher learning, filled with thought leaders, artists, and our collective imagination.
To learn more read, The Story of Black Mountain College—and a Look at Its Continuing Legacy and pick up one of several Black Mountain College publications from the Last Art School exhibition library in the gallery.
Founders: John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier
Founded: 1933
Ceased operations: 1957
Students: about 1,200 total
Administrative staff: about 30
Architectural style: Bungalow, craftsman, International Style
Built: 1923
Hunter College Art Galleries Spotlight:
Amy Tidwell, Development and Administration Manager
In addition to her official role at Hunter, Amy is an esteemed painter and the most jovial colleague. She literally enters the Hunter College Galleries like a flaming bright orange ball of sunshine. Amy-Tidwell.com
LISTENING TO…The Brundi Brothers and Sufjan Stevens - Javelin
WATCHING…A self proclaimed YouTube Girl, Amy is currently into Session One: Chaekgeori in Global Context
READING…A Handbook of Disappointed Fate and Cursed Bunny
ENJOYING… “ I am enjoying a lot of things.” Amy is currently soaring at pool, life drawing and rock climbing.