Katherine Markoski on Leap Before You Look

Black Mountain College scholar Katherine Markoski joins us to discuss dancer-choreographer Merce Cunningham and his roots at the celebrated school in conjunction with the Wexner Center’s fall exhibition, Leap Before You Look. Cunningham developed an affinity with the Black Mountain from his first visit with John Cage in 1948, and after subsequent trips he founded the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) there in 1953. The choreographer and the college community shared a vision of joint work, and the dances that Cunningham premiered in North Carolina at the conclusion of a 1953 residency, particularly Septet, embody the collaborative relationship between individual and group that would inform his company’s philosophy.

Director of the Kohl Gallery and a lecturer in Art History at Washington College, Markoski received her PhD in the History of Art from Johns Hopkins University, having completed a dissertation on Black Mountain College. A recipient of the Dedalus Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and a Smithsonian American Art Museum Postdoctoral Fellowship, she has worked as a curatorial assistant at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and has also taught courses on modern and contemporary art at American University, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and Oberlin College. She has written essays on John Cage and Jasper Johns and contributed an entry on the MCDC to the Leap Before You Look exhibition catalogue. Currently, she is transforming her dissertation into a book manuscript tentatively titled The Imagination of Community: Artistic Practice at Black Mountain College.

Cosponsored by Ohio State’s Department of History of Art.