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March 27, 2008
This new newsletter will be less formal
than the previous one. In it I will relate various news of
interest both to Black Mountain alum and to those interested in the
college.
The
architecture
section of the Project website has now been added. It was made possible by
a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
The biographies of a number of architects and designer-builders have been
added. Many more are in the process of being written. A guide to the
campuses is also being written and will be added at a later date.
Of special interest for
Black Mountain scholars is the availability of the papers of John Andrew
Rice, college founder, at the W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection at
Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.
John
Andrew Rice Papers. The papers of Theodore and Barbara Dreier have been donated to the North
Carolina State Archives in Raleigh, North Carolina and will be available
by this time next year. The papers of both of these gentlemen are
essential to any understanding of the college's history.
The Black Mountain College
Museum & Arts Center (BMCMAC) in Asheville is currently showing the the art of
Emerson Woelffer, who taught at the college in the summer of 1949. The
Museum in conjunction with Lenior-Rhyne College is planning a celebration of the
75th anniversary of the college's founding in the fall. Once their plans
are online, I will provide a link to that webpage.
Although I don't want the
newsletter to sound like an obituary column, unfortunately the list of
living college alumni grows shorter every year. Most recently, the death of Jonathan
Williams is a great loss to the small press world and to his many friends.
Jonathan started Jargon, his small press, at the Institute of Design not long before he
enrolled at Black Mountain. Jonathan thrived in the fertile, intensive
atmosphere at the college, and the early Jargon publications were
collaborations between the Black Mountain artists and writers. Jonathan
did everything: publisher, artist, poet, photographer. He will be missed.
Another loss to Black
Mountain is Robert Sunley, who died this winter. Bob was a psychologist
and social worker.
Robert Sunley
biography. He was especially concerned with the imbalance in the
attention given to the Black Mountain of the 1940s and 1950s and the lack
of interest in the early year. He sent a questionnaire to a number of
people, hoping to come up with a sociological study that could be
tabulated and provide some answers with respect to the influence of the
college and what did and did not work. The students tended to react
against being programmed and instead send mostly reflections and memoirs.
Bob compiled these and they have been published on the Project website.
Robert Sunley Project
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