A record of the rise and fall of the BMC farm that foregrounds the voices of a new cast of characters
Black Mountain College (BMC) was a wellspring of 20th-century creative unorthodoxy. From its founding in 1933 and over its celebrated 23-year history, the small liberal arts school in rural North Carolina attracted a remarkable number of famous and soon-to-be famous artists, writers and visionaries including Anni and Josef Albers, Ruth Asawa, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, Ray Johnson, Charles Olson and M.C. Richards. The exploits of these BMC cultural luminaries have been recounted time and time again. David Silver’s fascinating new book offers a very different perspective. The farm was vital to BMC. Throughout the Depression and World War II it provided vital sustenance, while serving as a testing ground for self-sufficiency, communal living and collaboration—the most precious and precarious ingredient at the college. Through deep original research, The Farm at Black Mountain College follows renegade students, faculty and farmers as they establish a campus farm in the 1930s, build a better farm in the 1940s and watch it all collapse in the 1950s. We meet a new cast of BMC characters whose stories have seldom, if ever, been explored, and whose adventures in agriculture illuminate what exactly happened at BMC across the decades, from optimistic community building to its plunge into substance-addled scarcity. In these engrossing pages, we encounter the extraordinary folk whose endeavors on the land helped shape the Black Mountain College of myth and extraordinary reality. David Silver (born 1968) is professor and chair of environmental studies at the University of San Francisco. He teaches classes on urban agriculture, hyperlocal food systems and food, culture and storytelling.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Hyperallergic
Nancy Zastudil
[Silvers] poignantly portrays the ever-elusive nature and romantic appeal of self-sufficiency complicated by the demands of modern life, creative muses, and clashing egos, all within the context of two of our most pressing needs as humans: food and community.
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Wednesday, December 18 at 7 PM, Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center will host David Silver, co-curator of The Farm at Black Mountain College, for a gallery walk-and-talk alongside a book launch / signing event. If you're in North Carolina, please join for an in-depth look at the Farm story and a celebration of the exhibition. This event is free and open to all. continue to blog
Ever since the wild and wooly, experimental art and design program at Black Mountain College shuttered its doors in 1957, its legend has continued to grow. Nearly all of the books and exhibitions about it have focused on its “jaw-dropping band of famous and soon-to-be-famous artists, writers, thinkers and visionaries from the US, Europe and beyond, a veritable who’s who of mid-20th-century Western art and ideas.” In his enlightening new book from Atelier Éditions and Black Mountain College Museum, author David Silver proposes a welcome new take, examining the school through its utopian, self-made, and ultimately not-self-sustaining agriculture program. “The farm was of vital importance to the college,” Silver writes, “not only because it provided necessary food from organic farming, but because it served as a testing ground for self-sufficiency, communal living and collaboration—the most precious and precarious ingredient at the college. In these pages, the spotlight is on the extraordinary contributions of these folk, many of whose stories have seldom, if ever, been explored.” Spreads are from The Farm at Black Mountain. continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 7 x 9.5 in. / 240 pgs / 2 color / 60 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $35.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $52 GBP £30.00 ISBN: 9781954957114 PUBLISHER: Atelier Éditions/Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center AVAILABLE: 12/17/2024 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Atelier Éditions/Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. By David Silver. Edited by Ananda Pellerin.
A record of the rise and fall of the BMC farm that foregrounds the voices of a new cast of characters
Black Mountain College (BMC) was a wellspring of 20th-century creative unorthodoxy. From its founding in 1933 and over its celebrated 23-year history, the small liberal arts school in rural North Carolina attracted a remarkable number of famous and soon-to-be famous artists, writers and visionaries including Anni and Josef Albers, Ruth Asawa, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, Ray Johnson, Charles Olson and M.C. Richards. The exploits of these BMC cultural luminaries have been recounted time and time again.
David Silver’s fascinating new book offers a very different perspective. The farm was vital to BMC. Throughout the Depression and World War II it provided vital sustenance, while serving as a testing ground for self-sufficiency, communal living and collaboration—the most precious and precarious ingredient at the college.
Through deep original research, The Farm at Black Mountain College follows renegade students, faculty and farmers as they establish a campus farm in the 1930s, build a better farm in the 1940s and watch it all collapse in the 1950s. We meet a new cast of BMC characters whose stories have seldom, if ever, been explored, and whose adventures in agriculture illuminate what exactly happened at BMC across the decades, from optimistic community building to its plunge into substance-addled scarcity. In these engrossing pages, we encounter the extraordinary folk whose endeavors on the land helped shape the Black Mountain College of myth and extraordinary reality.
David Silver (born 1968) is professor and chair of environmental studies at the University of San Francisco. He teaches classes on urban agriculture, hyperlocal food systems and food, culture and storytelling.
