This session offers a dynamic introduction to and overview of Black Mountain College, its early influences, and astonishing accomplishments. We will trace its founding principles, from its 1933 launch at the rented Blue Ridge site to its peak and final collapse in 1956 at its Lake Eden campus. Along the way, we’ll share stories, both big and small, about the radical college’s programs, creations, challenges, and the extraordinary faculty, students, and staff who called Black Mountain College home: from Josef and Anni Albers to Ruth Asawa to A. Lawrence Kocher; from Merce Cunningham to John Cage to Buckminster Fuller.

What was it about this moment, this place, and this extraordinary combination of personalities that made Black Mountain College one of the most influential and widely-studied educational experiments in the history of the US? Drawing from both published and new work, the co-presenters relish this opportunity to answer the question: Seventy years after its collapse, why are we still talking about Black Mountain College?

Amanda Fortini has written for T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The New Yorker, The Believer, County Highway, and The Paris Review, among other publications. A recipient of the Rabkin Prize, Fortini has been a fellow at The Black Mountain Institute at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada, and is working on a book about Las Vegas titled Flamingo Road. David Silver is a professor and author of The Farm at Black Mountain College (Atelier Éditions and the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, 2024).