Black Mountain College Museum
Black Mountain College was an avant-garde, experimental liberal arts school (with emphasis on ART) that operated near Asheville from 1933 to 1957. There were many notable BMC alumni and faculty, including Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Josef and Anni Albers, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Ruth Asawa, Franz Kline, and Buckminster Fuller.
On the ground floor of our Asheville condo was a small museum continuing BMC’s “legacy of educational and artistic innovation.”
The museum’s brand new exhibit, Black Mountain COLL(A)GE, showcased works by BMC students and faculty, including famous 20th century collage artists Robert Rauschenberg and Ray Johnson.
There were also works by contemporary collagists. My favorite was an undulating assemblage of electrical parts by Ethiopian artist Elias Sime.
Most intriguing of all was a 2026 installation by Chris Hamilton and Steve Pescatore, titled Time Tape Space. Magnetic tape ran from a reel to reel tape deck, down the hall on custom 3D-printed tape guides, to a wall of video and sound from VCRs and quadrophonic audio speakers. I’m not sure what it meant, but I’ll remember it.
