Addison Bray
Photograph included with student application. Courtesy of Western Regional Archives
Courtesy of Western Regional Archives
FOCUS
Performance Art
ROLE
Student
ATTENDANCE
1943 - 1944
BIRTH
1923-08-23
Ipswitch, MA
DEATH
1963-06-23
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
Author
Amanda Hartman
Amanda Hartman is the creator of BMC Yearbook, serving as the lead director, engineer, and researcher. She holds a MLIS in archive/ collections management, MA in art/ museum education, and BA in design. After working in museums and archives for a decade, she made the transition to tech and is now a software developer specializing in applications for museums, archives, and higher education.
Her interest in Black Mountain College began while working as a digital archivist with the Asheville Art Museum's BMC archive collection. She transcribed and digitized over 1500 documents created by the college. While working closely with these archives, she began independent research on the interracial program and Negro Week activities BMC, writing biographies of lesser known students and staff members. That research transformed into this BMC Yearbook project.
