Founded in 1933 in a small town in North Carolina, the storied Black Mountain College was in operation for just shy of 25 years, but continues to carry an outsize influence to this day. Emphasizing interdisciplinary work, community, and experimentation, the short-lived arts school counted among its faculty members such visionaries as Josef and Anni Albers, Willem de Kooning, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham. Its board of directors included William Carlos Williams and Albert Einstein, and many more great thinkers and creatives were among its students: Ruth Asawa, Cy Twombly, Ray Johnson, and Robert Rauschenberg, to name just a few. Free of schooling conventions—no grades, no tests—students created their own curricula and were all required to participate in cooperative labor, working in the kitchen, on the farm, and on construction projects.