126 The Human Figure Reinvented: Mumuye Sculpture from Nigeria By Frank Herreman and Constantine Petridis FEATURE Most readers of this magazine will associate the term Mumuye with a stunning corpus of fi gural sculptures and, to a lesser extent, with a wide variety of masks. Among the fi rst discoverers of the fi gures that would later be labeled as Mumuye was Brussels-based French art dealer Philippe Guimiot. Guimiot is remembered as the source for the most famous of all Mumuye fi gures, now housed at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, near Basel, Switzerland (fi gs. 6a–d). In 1968 Michel Huguenin and Edouard Klejman exhibited a group of eighteen Mumuye statues at the Galerie Majestic in Paris. Although Danish anthropologist Mette Bovin had already organized an exhibition of Mumuye artworks in 1965–66 at the Moesgård Museum at the University of Aarhus in Denmark that she herself had acquired in the fi eld, the exhibition at the Galerie Majestic truly placed Mumuye fi gural sculptures on the map. Judging from eyewitness reports, the arrival of these carved wood statues on the African art scene in Paris, Brussels, and New York in the late 1960s seems to have caused something of a shockwave. Today, almost fi fty years after their sudden appearance in the European and American capitals of African art, Mumuye fi gure sculptures rank among the most cherished of sub-Saharan Africa. “Mumuye” is a collective term used to denote different sedentary farming groups occupying the rocky hills south of the Benue River between the towns of Jalingo in Taraba State and Jeleng in Adamawa State in northeastern FIG. 1 (left, see also fi g. 17): Female fi gure. Mumuye, Nigeria. Wood. H: 53.5 cm. Collection of Claire Hocquet. Photo: © Vincent Girier Dufournier, Paris. FIG. 2 (right, near top): Map of Mumuyeland, Nigeria. © 5 Continents Editions, Milan. FIG. 3 (right, far top): Abdullahi Wali of Yoro displays a female “talking fi gure” in the village of Didanko, Nigeria, August 12, 1964. Photo by Mette Bovin. © Mette Bovin. The statue is today preserved in the Jos Museum in Nigeria.
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