Addison Bray

Addison Bray was a student from the fall of 1943 to summer of 1944. He took Introductory & Elementary Weaving with Anni Albers through the Winter/ Spring semester of 1944. He participated in plays, such as Outward Bound, and The Importance of Being Earnest. He asked for transcripts to be sent to Bard College and Columbia upon leaving BMC. According to Mary Emma Harris' interview with Addison, he taught a general curriculum in New York City high schools, primarily in Harlem.

Black Mountain College Project

Mary Emma Harris interviewed Addison in 1997 and the transcript is available from Appalachian State University under The Mary Emma Harris and Black Mountain College Project, Inc. Oral History collection.

Topics: Hearing about BMC – travel on Southern Railway – general studies at BMC – Anni Albers class – Eric Bentley (faculty) – Robert Wunsch (faculty) – theater curriculum – Clark Forman (faculty) – ElsaKahl (faculty) – summer 1944 fracas – integration debate – music curriculum

MEH: What was your first impression of the college?

AB: Comfortable. Informal. And I guess it by rights was. It had been a summer resort of some sort, and it still had that — if you come into the place, you say, "Ah, this'll be a pleasant two or three weeks.

MEH: Could you have worn your bathrobe to class at Black Mountain and gotten away with it?

AB: Oh, sure. Oh sure. People wore much less than that and got away with it

Courses Taken

Fall Quarter 1943-1944: DramaticProduction (R. Wunsch), Poetry (K. Kurtz),French Literature (De Graaff), Eukinetics (E. Kahl), Chorus (H. Jalowetz),Review Mathematics (M. Strauss)

Winter Quarter 1943-1944: Dramatic Production (W.R. Wunsch), Intro. Weaving(A. Albers), Eukinetics (E. Kahl), French Literature (DeGraaff), Cultural History(E. Bentley), Anthropology (P. Radin), European History (E. Bentley), Make-Up(E. Kahl)

Spring Quarter 1943-1944: Reading in 19thCentury French Literature (F. DeGraaff), Cultural History (E. Bentley),Make-Up (E. Kahl), Eukinetics(expression) (E. Kahl), Eukinetics (elementary) (E. Kahl), ComparativeCivilizations (P. Radin), European History (Audit) (E. Bentley), Weaving-elementary (A. Albers)

Summer 1944: Eighteenth Century (E. Bentley), Eighteenth Century FrenchLiterature (F. De Graaff), Dialogues of Plato (E. Straus), Psychology of the Piano(E. Steuermann), Four Lectures (E. Kerenek), Color (A. Albers), Clothing (B.Rudofsky)–no credit, left BMC