In 1933 John Rice opened a new school out side of Asheville NC after being dismissed from Rollins college for expressing his opinions about not wanting fraternities and sororities. His philosophy inspired by John Dewey, was to make art the center of all learning in his new college. He offered the chair position to Bauhaus professor Joseph Albers who was ready to leave the nazi occupied Germany. An amazing school was born.
Among the notable who taught or studied at Black Mountain College were Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Weil, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, John Chamberlain, Robert De Niro Sr,, Kenneth Noland, Buckminster Fuller, Ruth Asawa, Arthur Penn, Jaocb Lawrence, Ben Shahn, Franz Kline and Joel Oppenheimer. Albert Einstein lectured there as did Clement Greenberg and William Carlos Williams. In its later years Black Mountain College was led by Poet Charles Olson, producing what came to be known as the Black Mountain Poets, including Robert Creeley and Denise Levertov. Black Mountain is where Cunningham formed his dance company and Fuller built his first geodesic dome.
