Talk given September 20, 2019 at ReViewing Black Mountain College 11, hosted by the Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center, Asheville, NC.

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This talk presented a history of Josef Albers's color class as developed at Black Mountain College in the 1930s and 1940s. The color course is now regarded as one of the most significant contributions to 20th century art pedagogy. But this reputation obscures the fact that the class was first developed for an audience largely composed of amateurs and non-artists. The talk examined the role that the interdisciplinary atmosphere of Black Mountain College played in the development of the color class. It was illustrated with photographs of objects from the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and the Black Mountain College Papers of the North Carolina Western Regional Archives archives.