Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957

FAIN: GI-50680-14

Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA 02210-2172)
Helen Molesworth (Project Director: January 2014 to February 2017)

Implementation of a traveling exhibition, a catalog, and public programs about Black Mountain College in North Carolina, an experimental liberal arts college that played a vital role in the creation of American culture during the post-World War II era.

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston will present "Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957" (Oct 7, 2015--Jan 24, 2016). Black Mountain College (BMC) was an experimental liberal arts college that drew some of the foremost European and American artists of the inter- and postwar years. BMC was critical in teaching abstract art and collage, shaped modern dance and the sound of new music, and helped give birth to the American studio craft movement. The exhibition--the first comprehensive look at BMC in the U.S.--explores the role of art in the progressive education movement; the role of cosmopolitanism in mid-century and postwar American art and culture; the role of tactility, the body, and hand manufacture in 20th-century art; and the struggle between the individual and the collective in democratic society. It will include a 350-page catalogue, public programs, and performances and travel to the Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2016.