Cornelia "Nell" Goldsmith

Nell Goldsmith was a student at the college from 1942 to 1944. She was very active at the college as a Work Coordinator for the work camp, a Red Cross War Fund co-chairman, part of the Student Rooming Committee, and a Stage Manager in the theater department.

The following biography was written by Mary Emma Harris for Black Mountain College Project.

When a high school senior in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Nell university such as the University of Wisconsin. At a Christmastime tea, she saw Ruth O’Neill Burnette, who had graduated a year ahead of her and was enrolled at BlackMountain College. Ruth spoke enthusiastically of Black Mountain and gave her a catalogue. She was accepted and spent the summer in upstate New York where her aunt, also Nell Goldsmith, ran Camp Woodlea, a summer camp for children.

On her way south to Black Mountain, she stopped in New York and had her “first drink in a New York bar” with Peter Hill, her “step-second-cousin,” who had attended the Black Mountain as had his sister Barbara Hill Steinau. Heyns took a general curriculum with an emphasis on architecture. At the time both Lawrence Kocher and Anatole Kopp were teaching. She also took drawing with Josef Albers and weaving with Anni Albers.

Although the building program had almost come to a stop because of the war, she helped construct four music practice cubicles. At the end of the second year she was admitted to the Senior Division with an architecture major. Heyns left Black Mountain after her second year to join the war effort. She enlisted in the Army and was assigned to Homestead Army Air Base in Homestead, Florida. When they learned she had taken architectural courses, she was briefly given drafting projects.

Thereafter, she was assigned to make name plates for officers’s desks and other signs for the duration of the war. She met her husband Hugo Heyns, an artist, at the Homestead. He later became an architect, and they lived in the New Orleans area where he had his practice. Heyns recalled that even at BlackMountain her ultimate goal was to be a homemaker and rear a family. She and her husband had seven children over a seventeen year period. She has studied and taught ceramics as a hobby.

Relationships

Brother: Fellow BMC student, Frederic W. Goldsmith

Asheville Art Museum Collection

Writings about Nell can be seen in digitized college bulletins on Asheville Art Museum's collection website: collection.ashevilleart.org. They can be found by searching these accession numbers:

2017.40.097 March 1943 bulletin, "The Red Cross War Fund for Black Mountain went over the top in its first week of effort. A quota of $4,Nell was regularly mentioned in bulletins during her time in the work program, as she gave the weekly updates; 250 was exceeded by over $1000. The College community, under the leadership of Mrs Fritz Hansgirg, chairman, and Nell Goldsmith and Barbara Heller, student co-chairman, also exceeded its quota with total gifts of $83.39."

2017.40.026 January 1944 bulletin, "At the beginning of November the entire Work Program was reorganized. The responsibility, formerly assumed by MacGuire Wood, was taken over by the students, who appointed Nell Goldsmith and Ruth Miller as the Work Coordinators. In the new organization the emphasis was put on keeping people, for longer periods of time, on jobs they preferred in order to speed up efficiency and the learning of a skill. Regularity was stressed wherever possible."

Black Mountain College Project

Mary Emma Harris interviewed Cornelia in 2002 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 – family members at BMC – general classes at BMC – architecture with Lawrence Kocher – service in Second World War – Josef Albers’ class – work program – square dancing in local area – Saturday night entertainment – Ted and Barbara Dreier – discussion of color transparencies made at BMC

Courses Taken

Fall quarter 1942-43: Elements of architecture (Kocher), Readings in Literature (Kurtz), Introductory Weaving (A Albers), Introductory Botany (Voight), Studies in Rhythm (Cohen)

Winter quarter 1942-43: Elements of Architecture (Kocher), Introductory weaving (A Albers), Readings in Literature (Kurtz), Europe 1600-1800 (Bentley), Community Work Program (Wood)

Spring Quarter 1942-43: Elements of Architecture (Kocher), Introductory weaving (A Albers), Readings in Literature (Kurtz), The Nineteenth Century (Bentley), Community Work Program (Wood)

Fall quarter 1943-44: Matter and Energy (F Hansgirg), Introduction to Music (F Cohen), Drawing (J Albers), Twentieth Century Politics (E Bentley), Chorus (H Jalowetz)