Black Mountain College: A Thumbnail Sketch by Monty Diamond

In 1989 independent filmmaker, Monty Diamond, made a documentary short on Black Mountain College, which contextualizes the emergence of the school within the global context of rapidly shifting political and educational trends in of the early 1930's, and illustrates how in some ways history is repeating itself today.  The film provides dispassionate information about the school's mission, organization, key players and work product.  The film also provides a critique of how crisis in education and politics can serve as opportunity for education and artistic enlightenment, and a new social cohesion.   

Areas of New Research and Method of Exploration

The Agency of Art: War, Pedagogy and Social Change - 1915 to 1965 is a book being written to explore the parallel and interrelated relationships of three 20th century schools—the Harlem Renaissance (School), Staatliches Bauhaus and Black Mountain College (BMC).  In addition to the three primary [liberal] art schools to be researched, two more schools of radical thought in proximity to the Two World Wars —The New School, and North Carolina State’s College of Design—will also be researched. 

While many books have been written respectively about the Bauhaus and the Harlem Renaissance, exponentially less has been written about Black Mountain College (BMC) and the other schools, which the research will address.  Methods of research shall include exhibited and archive materials found in museums, research collections in university and public libraries, related websites and new recordings and transcriptions of interviews, so as to fathom:  catalyst(s) for each school’s inception, missions and manifestos, commonalities, key players, influencers and social impact at the regional and global scale, then and now:

@ Bauhaus (1919-1933): At the behest of the Weimar Republic governance, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in 1919—an experimental school that became “the model for reform efforts in its period.”[i]  14 years later, Adolph Hitler became chancellor of Germany, eliminating the Weimar Republic and promptly shuttering the Bauhaus.  In spite of this, “the historical Bauhaus is the most influential educational establishment in the fields of architecture, art and design.”[ii]

@ Harlem Renaissance (ca. 1915-1935): The Harlem Renaissance school—being a school in the sense of a group of artists under a common influence sharing the common doctrine^[iii] of “Negritude”[iv] and The New Negro[v] for social advancement by way of the arts—rose and fell during the same time period as the Bauhaus and Weimar Republic, and had major players who were important to the German modernist movement, and were often involved directly with BMC.

@ BMC (1933-1957):  1933 was the year that John A. Rice was discharged from the faculty of Rollins College, and with a small group of Rollins students and other Rollins faculty who left in protest, Rice started Black Mountain College using the pedagogic principles of John Dewey.[vi]  Curiously in 1933 as well, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president of the United States; during his tenure ordering the creation of the Works Project Administration (WPA) which breathed new life into the United States’ infrastructure, and the arts and humanities, disproportionately benefiting African-Americans.[vii]

@ New School (1919-Present):  After being censured by the president of Columbia University for protesting American activity in World War One, a group of [former] teachers, aligned themselves with other progressive educators and intellectuals, including John Dewey, resulting in the formation of the New School for Social Research in 1919 "to create a new model of higher education for adults...where ordinary citizens could learn from and exchange ideas freely with scholars and artists representing a wide range of intellectual, aesthetic, and political orientations.”[viii]

@ North Carolina State – School of Design (1948-Present):  In 1948, Henry L. Kamphoefner became the first dean of the School of Design at North Carolina State University.  That same year, he and George Matsumoto designed the first modernist house in Raleigh, North Carolina, the Kamphoefner House.  Speaking to the directive of the school under Kamphoefner’s leadership, alumni and professor emeritus, Robert P. Burns, said that at “the core of the School in these early years was an uncompromising belief that comprehensive design would produce a healthy environment, an improved society, and a better life for all. Experimental in nature, the School was open to new ideas and challenges.”[ix]

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[i] Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung. “Idea,” Bauhaus.de.

http://www.bauhaus.de/en/das_bauhaus/44_idee/  (October 23, 2016)

[ii] Bauhaus Movement.  “Bauhaus Design Movement: Art and Technology – A New Unity.”  Bauhaus-Movement.com

http://www.bauhaus-movement.com/en/  (October 22, 2016)

[iii] Merriam-Webster Dictionary. “Definition of School.” Merriam-Webster.com.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/school (October 21, 2016)

[iv] Mickilin, Anna T..  “Negritude Movement.”  Black Past:  An Online Reference Guide to African-American History

http://www.blackpast.org/gah/negritude-movement  (November 16, 2016)

[v] National Humanities Center.  “Migrations – 8. New Consciousness.”  The Making of African-American Identity, Volume III, 1917 – 1968.    http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/migrations/text8/text8read.htm   (October 23, 2016)

[vi] Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center.  “About Us.”  BlackMountainCollege.org

https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/history/  (October 22, 2016)

[vii] Zhang, Ai-min.  The Origins of the African-American Civil Rights Movement.  Google Books.

https://books.google.com/books?id=OmmhAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=wpa+disproportionately+benefited+african+americans+blacks&source=bl&ots=mFt5cMZOAX&sig=Z4Kl6cq1Od01nRK78yAMiZbmN30&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiduLCdsvDPAhXrxFQKHQmCDSYQ6AEINTAE#v=onepage&q=wpa%20disproportionately%20benefited%20african%20americans%20blacks&f=false  (October 23, 2016)

[viii] The New School for Social Research.  “About Us.”  The New School

http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/history/  (November 16, 2016)

[ix] NC State Design.  “A History of Success.”  NC State Design.

https://design.ncsu.edu/about/history-success  (November 15, 2016)

Research Synopsis

It has been said that education absent mindful-inclusion of the whole, will lead to elitism and entitled insularity, which enables the higher educated to “trample over the masses.”    However, and as this research will show, with mindful-inclusion at the fore of higher learning, three 20th century schools—the Harlem Renaissance (School), Staatliches Bauhaus and Black Mountain College (BMC)—in different regions of the Western world, became the chief form givers for art and culture in the modern age by employing new moral teachings and pedagogies espoused largely and respectively by John Dewey, Martin Luther King Jr., Walter Gropius, Henry L. Kamphoefner, Alain Locke, Albert Einstein, and W.E.B Du Bois.  While examining the pedagogic and moralist impact these individuals had on said schools, the research simultaneously looks at the impact the Two World Wars had on the schools, and also how and why each school influenced one another in facilitating cultural reform  and renaissance with enduring global implications.