Press release from Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center:
We are happy to announce that BMCM+AC received a major award from the Henry Luce Foundation as part of their Theology Responsive Grant program, in support of the Faith in Arts Institute, a partnership with UNC Asheville. Organized in collaboration with Dr. Richard Chess, Roy Carroll Professor of Honors Arts and Sciences and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at UNC Asheville, this institute will bring together academics, artists, philosophers, and spiritual thinkers to investigate the role of art in religious experience.
This institute will coincide with an exhibition curated by renowned independent curator Jade Dellinger, which will investigate John Cage’s Buddhist practice and its influence on his music, visual art and his understanding of the universe.
Accompanying the institute will be performances and programs including a world premiere performance of a commission entitled “Waves and Particles,” composed by John Luther Adams and performed by the JACK Quartet. Adams is a Pulitzer Prize winning composer whose work focuses on the enormity of nature and spiritual connection with place. “Waves and Particles” will explore the influence of BMC artists and thinkers, while drawing connections between science, nature, and spiritual imaginings. In Adams’ own words, the work is inspired by “quantum physics, and by the forms of fractal geometry” as well as the artistic and intellectual legacy of BMC, particularly through connections to John Cage and Adams’ late friend and mentor Lou Harrison.
Also in connection with the exhibition and Faith in Arts Institute, BMCM+AC will host the southeast premiere of choreographer Kimberly Bartosik’s “I Hunger for You,” a physical and temporal exploration of faith, desire, life force, violence, and compassion, alongside community engagement workshops led by Bartosik. Kimberly Bartosik, a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow and former member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company founded at BMC in 1953, will also stage two Merce Cunningham solos as part of the Cunningham Trust’s Centennial celebrations.
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