Daniel P. Biebuyck

Daniel P. Biebuyck (born 1925) is a leading authority on central African art with pioneering contributions to contextual African art studies.

Biography

Biebuyck was born in 1925 in Deinze, Belgium. He studied classical philology, law and ethnography, African art at Ghent University, and social anthropology at University College London. Under the auspices of the Institut pour la Recherche Scientifique en Afrique central (IRSAC), he was involved in field research from 1949–1961 among ethnic groups in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He studied the Lega, Bembe, Zoba and Nyanga peoples. Biebuyck was initiated into one of the higher grades of the bwami society of the Lega people. Most of what is known about the Lega is due to his studies between 1951 and 1953, in 1954 and in 1957, and his later publications.^[1] As a member of the land tenure commission for the Belgian Congo (1957–1961), he conducted brief field research among over 40 different populations where he studied questions pertaining to the relationships between sociopolitical structures and land tenure.

Biebuyck retired from the University of Delaware as H. Rodney Sharp Professor of Anthropology and the Humanities. As professor or visiting professor, he taught cultural and social anthropology, African art, and oral literature at the Universities of Lovanium (Kinshasa), Liège, and London. He also taught at UCLA, Yale, NYU. In 1990-93, he was the Golding Distinguished Professor of African art at the University of South Florida (Tampa).

Publications

Biebuyck's major publications are in the fields of central African Art, Epic literature, and systems of land tenure. Many were sponsored by grants from National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Guggenheim, Rockefeller Foundation, Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the universities of Delaware and California.

• 1961 With Mary Douglas. Congo Tribes and Parties. London: Royal Anthropological Institute.
• 1963 Ed. African Agrarian Systems. London: Oxford University Press. Reprint edition, 1966. 407 pp. (Contributions by leading authorities from Belgium, France, Holland, United Kingdom, United States of America, South African Republic).
• 1969 With Kahombo Mateene. The Mwindo Epic from the Banyanga. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press; University of California Press Paperbacks, 1971. 213 pp. Several reprint editions.
• 1969 Editor. Tradition and Creativity in Tribal Art. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press; University of California Press Paperbacks, 1973. 236 pp.(Contributions by William Fagg, William Bascom, Robert Goldwater, Jean Guiart, Roy Sieber, Ignacio Bernal, Adriaan Gerbrands, Robert F. Thompson).
• 1970 With Kahombo Mateene. Une anthologie de la littérature orale Nyanga. Brussels: Académie royale des Sciences d’Outre-Mer. 363 pp. The short Kahindo epic included in this publication is published in translation in Oral Epics from Africa, eds Johnson, John W. et al., pp. 294–301. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1997.
• 1973 Lega Culture: Art, Initiation, and Moral Philosophy among a Central African People. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 268 pp. and 110 pls. Large syntheses based on this book may be found in Brain, Cameron, Hunn, Layton, Smith and Perani. In African art books, catalogues of exhibitions and of sales, this is one of the most frequently mentioned works on African Art.
• 1978 Hero and Chief: Epic Literature from the Banyanga (Zaire Republic). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 320 pp; edited excerpts from one of the Mwindo epics in Oral Epics from Africa, eds Johnson, J.W., Thomas A. Hale, and Stephen Belcher, pp. 285–301, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997; edited excerpts from one of the epics in Les épopées d’Afrique noire, eds Kesteloot, Lilyan and Bassirou Dieng, pp. 528–537.
• 1981 Statuary from the Pre-Bembe Hunters: Issues in the Interpretation of Ancestral Figurines Ascribed to the Basikasingo-Bembe-Boyo.Tervuren: Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale. 164 pp. and 59 pls.
• 1984 with Nelly Van den Abbeele. The Power of Headresses: A Cross-Cultural Study of Forms and Functions. Ghent (Belgium): Snoeck-Ducaju en Zoon. 293 pp. and 223 pls.
• 1985 The Arts of Zaire. Southwestern Zaire, vol. 1. Berkeley and Los Angeles:University of California Press. 416 pp. and 100 pls.
• 1986 The Arts of Zaire. Eastern Zaire: The Ritual and Artistic Contexts of Voluntary Associations, vol. 2. Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 331 pp. and 98 pls.
• 1987 The Arts of Central Africa: An Annotated Bibliography. Boston: G.K. Hall. 300 pp.
• 1996 With Susan Kelliher and Linda McCrae. African Ethnonyms. Index to Art-Producing Peoples of Africa. New York: G.K. Hall and Co. An Imprint of Simon and Schuster Macmillan. London: Prentice Hall International. 378pp.
• 1994 Lega Sculpture. Sculpture lega. Paris and New York: Galerie Hélène and Philippe Leloup. 203 pp., including 87 pls. French text by Brunhilde Biebuyck and Mihaela Bacou.
• 2002 Lega. Ethics and beauty in the heart of Africa. Gent: Snoeck-Ducaju & Zoon.(Separate editipons in Dutch and in French)

References