Event 1: Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College

I visited the Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957 exhibition a few weeks ago. As stated on the website of the hammer museum, it is the first comprehensive museum exhibition in the United States about the experimental liberal arts college - the Black Mountain College. I have not heard about this college before, but after doing some research, I am very interested in its style of education.

The entrance of the exhibition

The Black Mountain College employed liberal arts education style that seen the study of art as the center. The students did not only focus on art education: they could choose their courses freely and had to participate in the daily operation of the college. In the first lecture, we talked about the separation of art and science. I believe the education that the Black Mountain College uses is one of the good ways to bridge this gap.
Though I am not a big fan of visiting museum, I found many of the artworks interesting. They are not pure arts but a combination of all the other subjects.
The most impressive work to me is Ruth Asawa's Untitled (S. 272). Asawa used copper and iron wire to construct a sophisticated object. The weaving style was first learned from Mexican craftspeople on her trip to Toluca.

Untitled (S. 272), Ruth Asawa, c. 1995

When I first saw this object, I thought about the trigonometric functions sine and cosine. Since these functions typically appear in the mathematic area, this work caught my attention immediately. I am not sure what Asawa tried to express through this work but I saw the beauty of the combination of math and art from it. I am also surprised by the precision of this extremely sophisticated object since it was completely hand made.

Me in the Hammer Museum

Despite this amazing work of Ruth Asawa, there are much more to explore in the exhibition. As Josef Albers said, “We do not always create ‘works of art,’ but rather experiments; it is not our intention to fill museums: we are gathering experience,” unlike typical artworks that people see in the museum, the works of the Black Mountain College are all derived from the "third culture". I highly recommend this event since it exhibits a way to approach the ideal education style that brings art and science together.

Sources:

1 "In-Gallery Performances." The Hammer Museum. Web. 3 May 2016. <https://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2016/leap-before-you-look-black-mountain-college-1933-1957/#>.