Nellore "Alice" Swan
Crop of "On the roof, backside of Robert E Lee Hall 1933. Alice Lee Swan, Joe Martin, and Mary Rice"
On the roof, backside of Robert E Lee Hall 1933. Alice Lee Swan, Joe Martin, and Mary Rice
FOCUS
Art/ Design/ Craft
ROLE
Student
ATTENDANCE
1933 - 1935
BIRTH
1912-10-01
Washington DC
DEATH
1964-08-08
Chicago, IL
Alice Swan was a student from the founding semester in 1933 to 1935. She took Weaving with Anni Albers in the winter of 1934.
Alice attended Rollins College before BMC and attended Yale University Drama School upon leaving. She was also a graduate of Milwaukee Downer College.
She married Walter Graham at the British Embassy in Peking, China, 1937, and worked as an Editor at Scott, Foresman, and Co. in Chicago for 17 years.
Asheville Art Museum Collection
September 1943 bulletin,
"Alice Lee Swan is now in the Near East after exciting and hazardous experiences in Tiensin under Japanese occupation. She was in Tiensin from the bombing of Pearl Harbor until September 24; during that time her baby was born. From Tiensin she and her husband and baby were taken to South Africa. There Alice Lee studied commercial art. She is married to Walter Gerald Graham."
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.
