Galleries Visual Arts

10th Annual ReVIEWING Black Mountain College Conference

Steel Workers, 1946. Jacob Lawrence, artist

This year’s ReVIEWING Black Mountain College conference will coincide with the relocation of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC). Conference events from Friday, September 28, through Sunday, September 30, include a reception for an exhibit of Jacob Lawrence’s art, a keynote address, workshops, performances, films and panel discussions.

The conference, co-hosted and co-organized with UNC-Asheville, began as a means of providing a gathering place and forum for scholars, artists and teachers doing work related to Black Mountain College (BMC), a groundbreaking institution located in Black Mountain from 1933–1957. “Over the ten years we’ve been doing it, conference participants have come to Asheville from all over the world,” says Alice Sebrell, BMCM+AC program director. “This year the number of proposals was the most ever, with a broad range of topics, workshops and performances to experience.”

Among Friday’s events will be the keynote address, The World of Jacob Lawrence, by Dr. Leslie King Hammond, an artist, curator, art historian and founding director of the Center for Race and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art. The address will be held at 4:15 p.m. at UNCA’s Reuter Center.

A reception for conference attendees and the general public will follow, from 6–8 p.m. at BMCM+AC’s new College Street location, to open the exhibit Between Form + Content: Perspectives on Jacob Lawrence and Black Mountain College. This exhibition is the first to focus on Lawrence’s experiences at BMC, where he was invited to teach in the summer of 1946. The exhibition will include early paintings he did in Harlem and on trips to the South, work from his years as a wartime artist for the U.S. Coast Guard and newly commissioned works by contemporary multi-media artists Tyondai Braxton and Grace Villamil, Jace Clayton aka DJ/rupture, and Martha Colburn. The exhibit will run through January 12, 2019.

The conference continues on Saturday, September 29, with a day-long schedule of events including a keynote panel, Contemporary Artists Respond to Jacob Lawrence. Panelists will be Clayton, Colburn, Braxton and Villamil, and discussion will be moderated by BMCM+AC executive director Jeff Arnal. The conference concludes on Sunday with a walking tour of BMC’s Lake Eden campus.

“The new location at 120 College Street will be transformative for us,” says Sebrell. “We have loved our home at 56 Broadway; it has been perfect for us since 2003, but we’re bursting at the seams and need more space. We’re celebrating our 25th anniversary this year and looking forward to this expansion with great excitement.” More than 6,000 square feet will provide room for a main gallery/performance space, research library and BMC Study Center, a lower-level small gallery, a museum shop and storage space for the museum’s collection. “For the very first time,” Sebrell says, “all of our primary resources will be under one roof.”

Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center will be located at 120 College Street beginning September 28. For a complete schedule of events and registration information for the conference, visit blackmountaincollege.org or call 828.350.8484

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