News & Events

Re-Viewing Black Mountain College2: Second Annual International Conference October 8-10

October 5, 2010

Sculptor Kenneth Snelson to Give Keynote Address at 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 9

The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and UNC Asheville are pleased to present Re-Viewing Black Mountain College2, an international conference that explores the history and rich legacy of the innovative Black Mountain College. The October 8-10 conference includes includes panels, performance, poetry and film. Internationally known sculptor Kenneth Snelson will give the keynote address.

For a complete schedule of events, go here.  

The conference begins at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 8, at UNCA's Highsmith University Union (HUU), with the simultaneous presentation of the Black Mountain College documentary, "Fully Awake,"  in the HUU Grotto and a Butoh Dance performance outside. Black Mountain College scholar Mary Emma Harris will speak in the HUU Grotto at 5 p.m.  A reception will follow from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, 56 Broadway, in downtown Asheville.

On Saturday and Sunday, the conference continues with more than 40 presentations and performances related to Black Mountain College's artists, educators, and the rich legacy of the college. UNC Asheville faculty members Seamus McNerny and Ann Dunn, Morganton poet Ted Pope, Josef Albers scholar Fred Horowitz are among the many presenters.

Snelson will give his keynote address at 7 p.m. Saturday, in HUU's Alumni Hall.  Snelson is a major American sculptor with work in collections that include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., museums in Holland, Australia, Japan and Germany and public art commissions all over the world. Snelson was a student at Black Mountain College in the summers of 1948 and 1949, where he worked closely with Buckminster Fuller, and where he discovered the principle known as "tensegrity". Known primarily for his gravity defying sculptures, Snelson is also an accomplished photographer with a particular interest in panoramic photographs.

The conference also includes a Mail Art Exhibition in the Highsmith Gallery. John Held Jr., director of the Modern Realism Gallery and Archive in San Francisco, will give a curator's talk there at 11:15 a.m. Sunday.

The conference is open to the public.  Weekend cost for the conference is $20; daily admission is $15; free for all students with ID and UNC Asheville faculty and staff.

More information about the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center can be found here.

MEDIA CONTACT: Alice Sebrell, Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, 828.350.8484