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1930s
1940s
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1950s
Those who inherited Black Mountain College
in the fall of 1949 were faced with the formidable task of healing the
badly fractured community, of raising funds, and of reexamining the
college’s goals. An administrator was hired to reorganize the college and
to raise funds – a union that was neither satisfactory for him nor for the
college. Former students Joseph Fiore, Warren "Pete"Jennerjahn, Betty
Jennerjahn, and Hazel Larsen Archer were hired to teach in the arts.
Robert Turner, David Weinrib and Karen Karnes taught ceramics, and
Katherine Litz, dance. M.C. Richards and her husband Albert William Levi
returned from a year’s sabbatical to teach. Composers Lou Harrison and
Stefan Wolpe taught music. Until 1953 the college continued to have a
general curriculum though the offerings were limited. Philosophy was
taught by Levi, anthropology by Paul Leser, chemistry and physics by
Natasha Goldowski, sociology by Flola Shepard, and mathematics by Max Dehn.
In 1951, the poet Charles Olson, who had
taught one weekend a month for the 1948-49 year, returned from the Yucatan
to teach and remained the dominant figure until the college’s closing. He
brought Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan to the college as teachers and,
together with Robert Creeley as editor, founded the
Black Mountain Review. A Pottery Seminar brought Shoji Hamada,
Soetsu Yanagi and Bernard Leach to the college. In the summers Franz
Kline, Ben Shahn, Robert Motherwell and Jack Tworkov taught painting; John
Cage, music; Merce Cunningham, dance; and Peter Voulkos, Warren MacKenzie
and Daniel Rhodes, pottery.
Although the college continued to espouse
the inherited ideals of the 1930s such as community living, a farm, work
program, and faculty-run college, the community was, in fact,
comprised largely of artists and scholars with little interest in farming,
administration or maintenance. Periodic efforts to give the college a more
traditional structure and program were unsuccessful. A conventional
college with an authoritarian administration inevitably meant a loss of
academic and creative freedom. The GI Bill benefits were dwindling, and
the conservative atmosphere in the 50s made it virtually impossible for
experimental ventures to raise funds. Eventually, the faculty were paid in
beef allotments from the remaining cows and parcels of property were sold.
In its darkest hours, despite the
inevitable demise, Charles Olson continued to postulate new schemes.
Finally, in the fall of 1956, the remaining faculty directed Olson to
begin the process of closing the college. The few students left the
campus, many for San Francisco where the college continued to sponsor
programs including a drama workshop directed by Robert Duncan and Olson’s
Special View of History lectures. In March 1957 the courts
ordered Olson to cease all programs, and the college closed although a
postmortem issue of the Black Mountain Review
did not appear until Autumn 1957.
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