Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center

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Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center

www.blackmountaincollege.org

The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center preserves and continues the legacy of educational and artistic innovation of Black Mountain College. We achieve our mission through collection, conservation, and educational activities including exhibitions, publications, and public programs.

08/29/2026

There's just one week left of the current exhibition, Black Mountain COLL(A)GE! This self-portrait featuring a young Robert Rauschenberg is currently on view as part of the exhibition. From the backwards "R" to the depictions of materials like paper and pencil, this collage-style lithograph captures more than just Rauschenberg's physical likeness.

Robert Rauschenberg accompanied Susan Weil to Black Mountain College in Fall 1948. He studied with Josef Albers and returned sporadically over the next several years as student, teacher, and artist-in-residence. Rauschenberg’s enthusiasm for popular culture and his rejection of the seriousness of the Abstract Expressionists led him to search for a new way of working. He found his signature mode by embracing materials previously unconsidered in an aesthetic context.

As part of the work program at BMC, Rauschenberg and Weil were on trash duty, making trips to the dump with trash from the college. We can only speculate as to how these experiences might have led him to find new materials to incorporate into his work, which is known for its legendary use of unusual, often found, materials—combining aspects of collage, sculpture, and formal painting.

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Robert Rauschenberg, Self Portrait for Dwan Gallery, 1965. Offset lithograph. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of Betty Jane Weil.

08/28/2026

What a magical evening at BMCM+AC! We want to extend our heartfelt gratitude to Drones in the Garden for last night's extraordinary event, combining poetry, sound collage, experimental electronics, and even a scent memory experience to celebrate the spirit of Black Mountain COLL(A)GE. The performance was a perfect reflection of the exhibition, demonstrating how texture, movement, cross-disciplinary exploration, collaboration, and community connection can open new possibilities in life and art. Drones in the Garden embodies these principles in their work, and we could not be happier to recognize them in our space as part of the living BMC legacy.

A special thanks to the performers, Patrick Kukucka (Falcon Mitts), Sophie Hull (Sleep Number), Lynn Fister (Farewell Phoenix), and reader Ash Alexandria Sierra; to Elaine Bleakney + Will Patton for lending their voices and words; to Jesse McSwain for his invaluable assistance with installation and sound; and to our BMC community for showing up to this PACKED performance! We were thrilled at the outpouring of support for this special evening!

The conversation continues: the hanging botanical sculptures by Drones in the Garden, which you can see in the foreground of these pictures, remain on view through the last day of the summer exhibition. Visitors to BMCM+AC are encouraged to create a collage (at our downstairs material station), then add it to the cloud formations. We invite you to visit us for the last week of Black Mountain COLL(A)GE, which closes after September 5th! Coming up next, mark your calendars for our exciting fall exhibition project: "Imaginary Landscapes: Architecture and Design at BMC."

08/27/2026

TODAY! Don't miss our final summer program - an evening of soundscapes and poetry curated by Drones in the Garden, an experimental art collective creating seasonal performance platforms for WNC musicians and writers.

Over the past week, Drones in the Garden members and museum visitors have been collaborating and collaging across time to build a floating botanical installation in the middle of the Museum. This installation will become the stage for tonight's performance and remain on view until the close of the current exhibition, Black Mountain COLL(A)GE, on September 5, 2026.

Tonight's performance begins at 7PM. Doors will open at 6:30PM. The performance is free, with no pre-registration. We hope to see you there!

08/26/2026

Early Registration is available NOW for the upcoming 16th Annual ReVIEWING Black Mountain College International Conference! Co-hosted by BMCM+AC and UNC Asheville October 2 – 4, 2026, the conference is a forum for scholars and artists to contribute original work on topics related to Black Mountain College and its place in cultural history.

You can register, see the full conference schedule, read presenter bios and abstracts, and more on our website at www.blackmountaincollege.org/reviewing

The conference format is designed to be interdisciplinary, with sessions that will include panels, presentations, performances, and workshops. BMC itself was a uniquely interdisciplinary organization, generating output from its faculty and students that often involved the melding of the visual, performing, and literary arts. Each year, conference participation reflects this with presentations that explore wide-ranging, fruitful intersections related to BMC.

This year’s three-day program, open to the public, celebrates the opening of the museum’s exhibition Imaginary Landscapes: Black Mountain College Architecture + Design, organized by Jeff Arnal, Alice Sebrell, Michael Beggs, Tyler Housholder, and Frédérique Davreux-Hébert. The exhibition traces the far-reaching impact of Black Mountain College’s design philosophy deeply influenced by Bauhaus ideals across disciplines and generations. It explores how experimental approaches to materials, pedagogy, and collective living reshaped not only how things were made, but how artists, architects, and thinkers understood the relationship between form and function, people and place, and imagination and environment.

Learn more on our website at www.blackmountaincollege.org/reviewing

08/25/2026

Happy birthday to Stefan Wolpe (1902 – 1972), German-born American composer and Black Mountain College Music Director from 1952 through 1956. Throughout his life, Stefan Wolpe was a fearless musical explorer. As a young man in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, he took up the cause of socialism and committed himself to a life in music. During the 1920s, he became both a member of the radical Novembergruppe and a proponent of Busoni’s “Young Classicism.” He composed workers’ songs and anti-fascist theater music alongside complex atonal concert music.

Inspired by visual forms, he embraced the dadaists’ art of juxtaposition and studied at the Bauhaus. Forced to flee from N**i Germany in 1933, he settled for four years in Palestine, where he studied Arab musical structures and forms as well as atonal and twelve-tone techniques.

In 1938, he started anew again, this time in the United States. After WWII, he entered the circle of New York abstract expressionist painters and attended meetings of the Eighth Street Club.

As director of music at Black Mountain College (1952-6), he galvanized a youthful, artistic community, as he had at the Bauhaus and on the kibbutzim in Palestine. During the sixties, he inspired a new generation of American composers and performers. He was a teacher and mentor to jazz musicians, modernist composers, and artistic avant-gardists alike.

During his last years, he was no longer altogether an outsider; but he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 1964. Even as it became almost impossible for him to notate music by hand, he continued to compose. He died in New York on 4 April, 1972.

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Text credits: excerpts from the Stefan Wolpe Society
Image credit: Jonathan Williams, Stefan Wolpe, Black Mountain College, 1954. Gelatin silver print. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of the Artist.

08/24/2026

There are still some tickets available for our very first BMC Campus Tour of the season! Join us on Friday, September 11, 2026 from 10AM-12PM for a walking tour of the historic BMC campus, including The Dining Hall, Lodges, The Quiet House, and The Studies Building as well as the iconic and recently conserved frescoes painted by Jean Charlot and BMC students in the summer of 1944.

🎟️ Tickets – The cost for the guided campus tour is $20/person, and free for kids 16 and under. Payment must be made in advance to reserve a spot. Limited to 20 participants. Tickets are non-refundable. You can purchase tickets on our website at www.blackmountaincollege.org/lake-eden-tours

📍 What to Expect – Directions will be provided after registration and payment. This is a rain or shine event, so please wear comfortable walking shoes and dress for the weather. Each two-hour tour will cover the lower campus and the Studies Building. Paths are gravel and terrain can be uneven. Contact us to discuss accessibility accommodations ahead of your tour date.

🗓️ Planning ahead? – We offer tours in the spring and fall seasons. You can expect fall dates to be released in the summer, and spring dates to be released in the winter. We do not offer campus tours in the summer months while Camp Rockmont is in session.

If you have any questions about our upcoming tours, please email [email protected].

08/23/2026

After a brief period of being out of stock, Leap Before You Look is back! 🎉📚 This 400-page landmark publication explores the radical experiment that was Black Mountain College — an incubator for some of the 20th century’s most influential artists, designers, and thinkers.

This richly illustrated catalogue, published in association with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, accompanied a major exhibition and includes scholarly essays that examine the college’s interdisciplinary approach, its connection to Bauhaus ideals, and its transformative influence on American avant-garde culture. Highlights include archival photographs, artwork across mediums, student writings, and musical scores — offering a vivid portrait of a place where creativity flourished beyond conventional boundaries.

Leap Before You Look is available in person at the Museum bookstore or on our website at https://bmcbooks.square.site/product/leap-before-you-look-black-mountain-college-1933-1957/74?cs=true&cst=custom

08/22/2026

There are just 2 weeks left of the current exhibition, Black Mountain COLL(A)GE! September 5, 2026 will be the last day you can see the works currently on view. Afterward, the Museum will close for 3 weeks as we prepare to reopen on September 25 for the next show, Imaginary Landscapes: Black Mountain College Architecture and Design.

From Josef Albers’ matière exercises to the 1951 “Glyph Exchange,” cutting up and rearranging found material was a way of life at Black Mountain College. Techniques of accumulation, selection, and reinterpretation—broadly interpreted here as collage—can encompass two-dimensional visual works, three dimensional assemblages, poems, performances, and more. This exhibition traces the presence of collage through the history and legacy of the renowned liberal arts college. Some of the 20th century’s most influential collage practitioners, including Robert Rauschenberg and Ray Johnson, studied at BMC. Many other students took up collage as a life-long medium, including Irwin Kremen, William Douglas McGee, Jo Sandman, John Urbain, Mary Parks Washington, and Susan Weil. Still others continued to experiment with cut-ups while working in other realms of creative production, such as the writer and critic Suzi Gablik. Finally, collage continues to exert a powerful influence on today’s art ecosystem. Selected works from contemporary collagists will contextualize the medium’s trajectory and provide a window into the future. This exhibition pieces together a wide array of ever-shifting stories, rearranging the moving parts to assemble a visual and sonic exploration of Black Mountain COLL(A)GE.

Learn more on our website at www.blackmountaincollege.org/black-mountain-collage/

08/21/2026

This wild collage of camouflage and unlikely characters (check out the worm and seashell at the bottom of the artwork) is currently on view as part of Black Mountain COLL(A)GE. Titled Tropism #3, this intricate collage was created by artist and writer Suzi Gablik.

Suzi Gablik was raised in New York, and attended BMC at the age of 16 for the Summer Session of 1951. Though she was studying painting with Robert Motherwell, she also began writing under Charles Olson. The College was hugely influential to Gablik. She reflected, “It was one of those defining choices in life. Although I was only there for two months, in that unorthodox environment, my maverick self, which was not easily accommodated at home, had the time and provocation to emerge.”⁠
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Gablik returned to New York to continue studies with Robert Motherwell at Hunter College in NY, receiving her degree in 1955. She explored painting and collage work, layering paint and magazine cut outs on canvas. She later became an influential voice in art theory, history, and criticism, advocating for art that strengthens communal relations and provides space for spirituality and healing. She authored six books: Pop Art Redefined (1969), Magritte (1970), Progress and Art (1977), Has Modernism Failed? (1984), Conversations Before the End of Time (1997), The Re-Enchantment of Art (1991), Living the Magical Life (2002). Her surrealist heritage and her deep concern for ecological themes are apparent in these complex collages, created from found imagery and supplemented with careful painting to create harmony between their elements.

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Suzi Gablik, Tropism #3, 1970s. Collage and paint on canvas, 23 3/4 x 24 inches. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of the Artist.

08/20/2026

STARTING TODAY, Drones in the Garden will install a pop-up hanging botanical installation at BMCM+AC! Stop in anytime over the next week to see it come together, and be sure to join us for the culminating performance of poetry + music on THURSDAY, August 27, 2026 at 7PM! This event is free and open to all, no registration required.

The performance will feature Farewell Phoenix, Sleep Number, Falcon Mitts, and Ash Sierra:

Farewell Phoenix is the experimental music project of Vietnamese-American artist, video animator, writer, composer and synthesist Lynn Nguyen Fister. Lynn has an all-encompassing approach to her practice, forging artforms to often create surreal, sometimes escapist or allegorical experiences, recontextualizing and informing the disciplines through new lenses.

Sleep Number is an experimental music project arranged by Sophie Hull, that merges heavy drone, field recordings, noise and driving vocals with synth-laden soundscapes & occasional guitar. Blurring the line between waking and sleeping, this music is crafted to pull listeners into a deep, immersive state of mind.

Patrick Kukucka is the owner of Bagatelle Books. Offering both used and new books at the store, he specializes in a unique and rare collection. He also hosts shows at Bagatelle, is a sound technician and performs thoughtful and warm ambient soundscapes as Falcon Mitts.

Ash Alexandria Sierra is an artist and plant devotee whose work explores what it means to seek the numinous within the seemingly mundane. Drawing from depth psychology, alchemical thought, and eco-herbalism, their recent practice investigates aromatics and story to invoke the imaginal through which the symbolic life of the psyche becomes perceptible, strengthening a relational participation with the living world.

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Photo credits: All polaroids from Sophie Hull’s camera. Hull took photos of Lynn and Patrick. Eric (Rodent) Cheslak took the image of Sophie. Photo of Ash + Sophie from a 2026 DITG event.

Address

120 College Street
Asheville, NC
28801

Telephone

+18283508484

Website

https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/

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