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In 'Childhood's Retreat,' A Boy Climbs A Tree To View The Man He's Become

The collaborative spirit of Black Mountain College — once home to the likes of John Cage and Willem de Kooning — lives on in a theatrical song cycle performed by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.

Although it closed 60 years ago, Black Mountain College keeps on giving. In its heyday, the liberal arts institution near Asheville, N.C., counted many of the mid-century's great artistic thinkers, including , Willem de Kooning, Cy Twombly, Buckminster Fuller, Francine du Plessy Gray and Robert Rauschenberg, among its faculty and students.

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