Curated by Helen Molesworth

Having taken on artistic labor and the legacy of the part-object in contemporary sculpture, Helen Molesworth turns her curatorial acumen to the formidable artistic legacy of Black Mountain College, an experimental hothouse of multidisciplinary artistic innovation that existed for just over two decades. Not only is the exhibition to feature more than 260 contributions by almost a hundred artists—including John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Gwendolyn and Jacob Lawrence, and a host of equally celebrated and lesser-known figures—but it will also incorporate a range of performances. A restaging of Cage’s legendary first Happening, Theater Piece No. 1, 1952, will take place throughout the show’s run. Given the importance of cross-media artistic collaborations in today’s art world, a look back at Black Mountain, complemented by a substantial catalogue, could not come at a more auspicious time. Travels to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Feb. 21–May 15, 2016.

— Branden W. Joseph