Panel text reads:
The Southern Railway train had left at noon, with black waiters in red dinner jackets whisking crumbs off white linen tablecloths and ice cubes in large carafes knocking noisily against each other. But twelve hours later, the train had turned into a pumpkin. Its dining car had been removed. The bourbon-drinking, cigar smoking men and gotten off, and it was shortened by several links. Now stubby, like a salamander, having lost its curvaceous tail, the train was chugging into Appalachia.
By the time she opened the shade and stared at the red clay of the region, it had become a milk train making whistle stops: High Point, Lexington, Statesville, Hickory, Alpine, Marion, Old Fort, Black Mountain.
The college dump truck waited for her at the station. She had arrived. It was September 1945.
And once there, she began to participate in what would become for her the essence of the Black Mountain experience: sitting at the seminar table and partaking of the discussions with the great minds of the renowned persons who came and went there. All she had to do was find a seat on one of the rush-covered chairs. And what she primarily bore witness to, day in and day out, was that the great minds, the docents, the teachers, had questions. That everything they talked about was in the form of an inquiry and that this inquiry had no end.
She did not know then, of course, that she would several decades hence create a forum of inquiry whose practice would be the written word and whose question would be: "Who am I?"
Hannelore Hahn, 1995
The Southern Railway train had left at noon, with black waiters in red dinner jackets whisking crumbs off white linen tablecloths and ice cubes in large carafes knocking noisily against each other. But twelve hours later, the train had turned into a pumpkin. Its dining car had been removed. The bourbon-drinking, cigar smoking men and gotten off, and it was shortened by several links. Now stubby, like a salamander, having lost its curvaceous tail, the train was chugging into Appalachia.
By the time she opened the shade and stared at the red clay of the region, it had become a milk train making whistle stops: High Point, Lexington, Statesville, Hickory, Alpine, Marion, Old Fort, Black Mountain.
The college dump truck waited for her at the station. She had arrived. It was September 1945.
And once there, she began to participate in what would become for her the essence of the Black Mountain experience: sitting at the seminar table and partaking of the discussions with the great minds of the renowned persons who came and went there. All she had to do was find a seat on one of the rush-covered chairs. And what she primarily bore witness to, day in and day out, was that the great minds, the docents, the teachers, had questions. That everything they talked about was in the form of an inquiry and that this inquiry had no end.
She did not know then, of course, that she would several decades hence create a forum of inquiry whose practice would be the written word and whose question would be: "Who am I?"
Hannelore Hahn, 1995
Artwork: 1995.38.1
"The Southern Railway train had left at noon..."
This work was created for the 1995 exhibition Remembering Black Mountain College curated by Mary Emma Harris in conjunction with Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and the BMC alumni reunion organized by Mary Holden Thompson, founding director of BMCM+AC.
24 x 18 inches
In copyright
Gift of Hannelore Hahn
Hannelore Hahn, "The Southern Railway train had left at noon...", 1995. Printed ink on foam board. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of the artist.
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