Nancy Dunn

Photograph included with student application. Courtesy of Western Regional Archives

Francis Foster, Nancy Dunn, Lenny Schwartz, Bernice Bernstein, Ike Nakata on dock at Lake Eden. Courtesy of Western Regional Archives.

FOCUS

Art/ Design/ Craft

ROLE

Student

ATTENDANCE

1945 - 1948

BIRTH

1927-08-03

Rochester, NH

Nancy Dunn was a student from 1947 to 1948. She had a focus in art and completed one of her graduate examinations on upholstery. She took Weaving and Advanced Weaving under Trude Guermonprez and Anni Albers from the fall of 1947 to the spring of 1948.

Alternative Name: Nancy Eisenman, married George Eisenman, 1952.

Black Mountain College Project

Mary Emma Harris interviewed Nancy 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: Family background – general curriculum – Anni Albers weaving class – Josef Albers classes – Annette Stone and afternoon tea – work program – Mary Gregory – BMC students – college integration– Buckminister Fuller’s dome – post-BMC education – entertainment at BMC – impact of mountain environment – rattlesnake - living in Chile when husband was working there – living in Guatemala and interest in textiles – design of dolls using indigenous textiles and costumes and working with local women – Dunn Foundation – Mush Day

Courses Taken

Fall 1945-46: Cultures of Asia (Miller), BeginningFrench (Schwarz), TheModern Novel (Merrick), Principles of Writing (Merrick), Chorus (Lowinsky),Drawing (Albers).

Winter 1945-46: Cultures of Asia (Miller), Principles of Design (Merrick), Design(Albers).

Spring 1945-46: Race Problem (Miller), Field Work in Social Studies (Wallen),Woodworking (Gregory), Chorus (Lowinsky), Work Program.

Fall 1946-47: Cultural History of the Greek World (Levi), Painting (Bolotowsky),A Capella (Lowinsky), Shakespeare (M.C.), Intro to Music (Schlesinger).

Spring 1946-47: Drawing (Bolotowsky), Painting (Bolotowsky),MedievalCulture (Levi), A Capella (Lowinsky).

Fall 1947-48: Reading Fiction (Richards), Drawing (Bolotowsky), Weaving(Guermonprez), Painting (Bolotowsky).

Spring 1947-48: Drawing (Bolotowsky), Weaving (Guermonprez), Painting(Bolotowsky), Aristotle and Plato tutorial (Dehn).

Summer 1948: Color (Albers), Tolstoi (Rosenfeld)

Swimming day.
Photograph of author

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.

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