The Farm at Black Mountain College recovers the largely untold agricultural history of one of modernism's most mythologised institutions, tracing the campus farm through its founding idealism, wartime necessity, and eventual collapse across three defining decades.
About This Book
Black Mountain College occupies an almost legendary place in 20th-century creative history — but the story told most often is the one populated by Albers, Cage, Fuller, and de Kooning. David Silver's research turns to the land itself. The farm was not peripheral to BMC's experiment in communal living and progressive education; it was structural to it. Through the Depression and World War II, it fed the community and tested ideals of self-sufficiency and collaboration that defined the college's ethos. Silver follows the renegade students, faculty, and farmers who worked the soil alongside the cultural luminaries, revealing an institution whose radical pedagogy extended well beyond the studio and into the field. Essential reading for anyone interested in the intersection of art, education, and agrarian life.
Key Features
- 240 pages of narrative history drawing on deep original research into Black Mountain College's agricultural life
- Written by David Silver, professor and chair of environmental studies at the University of San Francisco
- Covers the full arc of BMC's farm from the 1930s founding through the 1950s collapse, alongside figures including Anni and Josef Albers, Ruth Asawa, John Cage, Buckminster Fuller, and others
- Published by Atelier Editions / Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center
What You'll Discover
- How the BMC farm functioned as a testing ground for communal living and self-sufficiency, not merely a food source
- The role of agricultural labour in shaping the college's pedagogy and its ideals of collaboration during its celebrated 23-year history
- The lives and contributions of the students, faculty, and farmers who worked the land alongside the college's more celebrated artistic figures
- The structural reasons behind the farm's collapse in the 1950s, and what that collapse meant for the institution as a whole
About the Author
David Silver (born 1968) is professor and chair of environmental studies at the University of San Francisco. He teaches courses on urban agriculture, hyperlocal food systems, and food, culture, and storytelling.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 240
- Dimensions: 24.1 x 17.8 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781954957114
- Publisher: Atelier Editions / Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Historians of modern art and education, researchers with an interest in progressive pedagogy, readers drawn to the intersection of agrarian life and avant-garde culture, and anyone seeking a counter-narrative to the familiar Black Mountain College canon.