Chance Operations: Experiments in Art and Education at Black Mountain College February 1-2, 2018
Chance Operations: Experiments in Art and Education at Black Mountain College
February 1-February 2, 2018
Vanderbilt University’s Department of Art (led by John Warren, lecturer, video art) and the Wond’ry present Chance Operations: Art and Educations at Black Mountain College, a two-day interdisciplinary symposium that will examine the contemporary relevance of Black Mountain College’s immersive teaching models on art, design, and education. Artists, curators, architects, students and educators from various disciplines will help examine the contemporary relevance of Black Mountain’s unique pedagogical approach through lectures, roundtables, readings, concerts and performances.
Located in the foothills of North Carolina, Black Mountain College (1933-1957) was an experimental liberal arts college founded on the principles of balancing academics, arts, and manual labor within a communal environment. Equally influenced by the utopian ideals of the progressive education movement and the interdisciplinary approach of the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College placed the arts at the center of liberal arts education and believed that in doing so it could better educate citizens for participation in a democratic society. During the short period the college was open, it served as a testing ground for ideas and attitudes that would profoundly reflect and alter the intellectual and creative life of the twentieth century. A partial list of the maverick spirits attracted to the college includes Josef and Anni Albers, John Dewey, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Jacob Lawrence, Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Kenneth Noland, Ruth Asawa, Ray Johnson, Susan Weil, Vera B. Williams, Ben Shahn, Franz Kline, Arthur Penn, M.C. Richards, Francine du Plessix Gray, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Katherine Litz, Jonathan Williams, Dorothea Rockburne and many others.
Chance Operations is free and open to the public. The event is organized in conjunction with the Fine Arts Gallery exhibition, Looking Back (Looking Forward): The Black Mountain College Experience and John Warren’s Commons iSeminar, The Experimental Arts at Black Mountain College. The symposium is supported by the Department of Art, Department of Theater, and The Wond’ry, with additional interest from the Fine Arts Gallery, Blair, the program of Cinema & Media Arts, and The Ingram Commons.
For more information regarding symposium events and programming, please visit:
Black Mountain College Symposium
New Dialect
Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery