Birchler Linus
Full Name: Birchler Linus
Gender: male
Date Born: 1893
Date Died: 1967
Place Born: Einsiedeln, Schwyz, Switzerland
Place Died: Männedorf, Zurich, Switzerland
Home Country/ies: Switzerland
Overview
Sources
Der Brockhaus Enzyklopädie
Art Historians
Biondo, Michelangelo
Full Name: Biondo, Michelangelo
Gender: male
Date Born: 1497
Date Died: 1570
Place Born: Venice, Veneto, Italy
Place Died: Rome, Lazio, Italy
Home Country/ies: Italy
Subject Area(s): painting (visual works)
Overview
1549 book, narrative history of painting.
Sources
KGK, 30; SKL, 213
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
1549 book, narrative history of painting.
Binyon, Laurence
Full Name: Binyon, Robert Laurence
Other Names:
- Robert Laurence Binyon
Gender: male
Date Born: 1869
Date Died: 1943
Place Born: Lancaster, Lancashire, England, UK
Place Died: Reading, England, UK
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): drawings (visual works) and prints (visual works)
Career(s): curators
Overview
Poet; Assistant Keeper of Prints and Drawing, British Museum. Binyon’s father was Frederick Binyon (1838-1900), a minister, and mother Mary Dockray (Binyon), the daughter of Robert Benson Dockray (1811-1871), principal engineer of the London and Birmingham Railroad. He attended St. Paul’s School before pursuing Classics at Trinity College, Oxford University. In 1890 he made a first in classical moderations, and in 1892, a second in litterae humainoires. He joined the Department of Printed Books at the British Museum beginning in 1893. In 1895 Campbell Dodgson recruited him for the Department of Prints and Drawings. During these years Binyon produced scholarly catalogs for the Museum as well as monographs on art. His first book on painting-related subjects, Dutch Etchers of the Seventeenth Century appeared in 1895 and was quickly followed by John Crone and John Sell Cotmanin in 1897. Throughout his career he also published on William Blake. He married Cicely Margaret Powell in 1904. At the turn of the century he was part of a group of artists and literati who met at the Wiener Cafe in New Oxford Street, London. These included the artists Sir William Rothenstein (1872-1945), Walter Sickert (1860-1942), Charles Ricketts (1866-1931), Lucien Pissarro (1863-1944), and Edmund Dulac (1882-1953). In 1907 Binyon’s play Attila was performed using set designs by Ricketts. His scholarly interests turned toward Chinese and Japanese art in the early twentieth century. Painting in the Far East, a survey of Asian painting, appeared in 1908 and The Flight of the Dragon, a study of Eastern aesthetics, in 1911. He was made assistant keeper of Prints and Drawings in 1909. In 1913 Binyon was placed in charge of the newly established Department of Oriental Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. During World War I he volunteered for the Red Cross, assisting wounded soldiers as an orderly in 1916.
Throughout these years continued to publish poetry and gained fame in that area. In the 1930s he translated Dante’s Divine Comedy into English using its original terza rima, a feat still considered remarkable both for its artistic merit and scholarly skill. With this he was assisted by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)and Ezra Pound (1885-1972). He was named Keeper of the Prints and Drawings Department in 1932 and retired from the Museum in 1933. His son-in-law, Basil Gray, succeeded him at the new department of oriental antiquities (created in 1933), though as assistant until 1940 owing to his young age; Arthur Mayger Hind succeeded him as Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings. In his retirement was the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University in 1933-1934 (following Eliot), where he delivered the lectures, “The Spirit of Man in Asian Art.” The lectures were published in 1935. Binyon was appointed to the Byron chair of letters at Athens in 1941. The war in Europe already made this appointment problematic; Binyon narrowly escaped Greece after its invasion. He died in a Reading, England, nursing home. His daughter was the medievalist Nicolete Mary Binyon (1911-1997), wife of Gray.
Throughout his life he worked as both a poet and art historian. His work on Asian art was instrumental in raising the interest in Far Eastern art in Great Britain. The painting of Wyndham Lewis and the poetry of Pound were influenced by Binyon’s scholarship in Asian art. His art historical work draws from his sensibilities as a poet and literary historian. However, his works on Dutch painters and English watercolorists were works of scholarship.
Selected Bibliography
The Art of Botticelli: an Essay in Pictorial Criticism. London: Macmillan and co., 1913; Asiatic Art in the British Museum (sculpture and painting). Paris: Brussels, G. van Oest, 1925; Chinese Paintings in English Collections. Paris: Brussels, G. Vanoest, 1927; The Court Painters of the Grand Moguls, [introduction and notes by T. W. Arnold]. London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1921; Dutch Etchers of the Seventeenth Century. London: Seeley and Co., 1895; John Crome and John Sell Cotman. London: Seeley and Co., 1897; William Blake: . . . Woodcuts Photographically Reproduced in Facsimile. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1902; The Followers of William Blake: Edward Calvert, Samuel Palmer, George Richmond & Their Circle. New York: Minton, Balch & Company, 1925; The Engraved Designs of William Blake. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1926; The Spirit of Man in Asian Art. Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1933-34. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935.
Sources
Hatcher, John. Laurence Binyon: poet, scholar of East and West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995; Humphreys, Richard. “Laurence Binyon.” Dictionary of Art
Archives
- Archive of Laurence Binyon (1869-1943) 19th century-20th century, British Library. http://searcharchives.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do?tabs=detailsTab&ct=display&fn=search&doc=IAMS032-001954844&indx=1&recIds=IAMS032-001954844&recIdxs=0&elementId=0&renderMode=poppedOut&displayMode=full&frbrVersion=&dscnt=2&fromLogin=true&dstmp=1565114330226&srt=rank&vl(freeText0)=032-001954844&vid=IAMS_VU2&mode=Basic, Loan MS 103/1-77.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
Poet; Assistant Keeper of Prints and Drawing, British Museum. Binyon’s father was Frederick Binyon (1838-1900), a minister, and mother Mary Dockray (Binyon), the daughter of Robert Benson Dockray (1811-1871), principal engineer of the London and B
Bing, Gertrud
Full Name: Bing, Gertrud
Other Names:
- Gertrud Bing
Gender: female
Date Born: 1892
Date Died: 1964
Place Born: Hamburg, Germany
Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: Germany
Overview
Early Warburg Institute developer and Director. Bing’s parents were Moritz Bing and Emma Jonas (Bing). After attending the Lyceum in Hamburg, 1909-1913 and receiving an abitur from the Heinrich-Hertz Realgymnasium in 1916, she attended the universities of Munich and then Hamburg concentrating in philosophy. Her dissertation, written under Ernst Cassirer in 1921, focused on Lessing and Leibniz. The following year she began working as a librarian at the Warburg Library (Kulturwissenschaflichen Bibliothek Warburg or “KBW”), founded by Aby M. Warburg, who was then hospitalized for a mental condition. She would be associated with various aspects of the Warburg the rest of her life. In 1924 Bing became Warburg’s personal research assistant. Together with Fritz Saxl the three became the Warburg Institute of those early years. The KBW officially opened in 1926. She effectively became the director in 1927. At Warburg’s death in 1929, Bing edited his Gesammelten Schriften. With the Nazi rise to power in 1933, the KBW, founded by and named for a Jew, fell from official favor. Together with Saxl, who was now Bing’s life partner, the two moved the KBW to London as the Warburg Institute. The Institute was headed by Saxl with assistance and lecturing by Henri Frankfort, with Bing as assistant Director. Saxl and Bing worked tirelessly to sponsor and find jobs for art historians fleeing Nazi Germany. At the beginning of World War II, Bing drove an ambulance in Britain as part of t he London Auxilliary Ambulance Service until she was dismissed as an “enemy alien.” Saxl and Bing’s home in Dulwich was open to many scholars throughout their career, including the young art historian couple from New York University, Harry Bober and Phyllis Pray Bober. In 1948 Saxl died and was succeed as director by Frankfort. Bing succeeded Frankfort at his death in 1954, lecturing at the University of London as the Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition. Bing fell ill while working at the Institute in 1964 and died a month later.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Der Begriff des Notwendigen bei Lessing: Ein Beitrag zum geistesgeschichtlichen Problem Leibniz-Lessing. Hamburg, 1921; edited, Warburg, Aby. Die Erneuerung der heidnischen Antike: kulturwissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Geschichte der europäischen Renaissance. 2 vols. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1932; “A. M. Warburg.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 28 (1965): 299-313.
Sources
“In Memoriam Gertrud Bing, 1892-1964.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 27 (1964): [1-2]; Bober, Phyllis Pray. A Life of Learning. Charles Homer Haskins Lecture. New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 1995, p. 12; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 56-9; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. 2nd. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007, pp. 27-28.
Archives
- BING, Gertrud (1892-1964), Warburg Institute. https://aim25.com/cats/108/8604.htm, GB 1370 WIA, Gertrud Bing.
Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen
Early Warburg Institute developer and Director. Bing’s parents were Moritz Bing and Emma Jonas (Bing). After attending the Lyceum in Hamburg, 1909-1913 and receiving an abitur from the Heinrich-Hertz Realgymnasium in 1916, she attended th
Billi, Antonio
Full Name: Billi, Antonio
Gender: male
Date Born: c. 1480
Date Died: c. 1536-1537
Home Country/ies: Italy
Subject Area(s): biography (general genre), Florentine, and Italian (culture or style)
Overview
Artists’ biographies (basically Florentine) 1530.
Sources
KGK, 29; SKL, 167-8
Artists’ biographies (basically Florentine) 1530.
Bille, Clara
Full Name: Bille, Clara
Gender: female
Date Born: unknown
Date Died: unknown
Subject Area(s): Dutch (culture or style), eighteenth century (dates CE), and patronage
Overview
Art patronage scholar of XVIII c. Holland.
Selected Bibliography
De Tempel der Kunst, of, Het Kabinet van den Heer Braacamp. 2 vols. Amsterdam: J. H. De Busey, 1961.
Sources
KRG, 120 mentioned; KMP, 85
Art patronage scholar of XVIII c. Holland.
Bierens de Haan, Johan Catharinus Justus
Full Name: Bierens de Haan, Johan Catharinus Justus
Other Names:
- J. C. J. Bierens de Haan
Gender: male
Date Born: 17 November 1867
Date Died: 18 December 1951
Place Born: Leiden, South Holland, Netherlands
Place Died: Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Home Country/ies: Netherlands
Subject Area(s): prints (visual works)
Career(s): art collectors and physicians
Overview
Print collector, medical doctor; surgeon. Bierens de Haan was the son of David Bierens de Haan, professor of mathematics and physics at Leiden University, and Johanna Catharina Justina IJssel de Schepper. The young Bierens de Haan attended the Leiden gymnasium and, from 1887 to 1894, he studied medicine at Leiden University. He also received training in hospitals and universities abroad, in particular in Bonn, Vienna, Paris, and London. In those years he began building up his print collection, while visiting the European print rooms. After having earned, in 1896, his doctor’s degree, he specialized as a surgeon. In 1899, at the outbreak of the Boer War, he went to South Africa to serve the Dutch Red Cross as an ambulance-doctor. In 1901 returned to Leiden, where he continued his training as a surgeon. In 1902 he joined the chief committee of the Dutch Red Cross, a position that he held until 1915. In 1905 Bierens de Haan settled in Rotterdam, where he practiced as a surgeon. Besides his profession he kept a vivid interest in print collecting. During the Balkan Wars of 1912/13, in Greece, he again served as an ambulance doctor. Another war, the First World War, brought him to Paris, where he directed, from 1915 to 1917, the Dutch hospital in the Bois de Boulogne. Before and after this war Bierens de Haan traveled extensively to destinations as far as Russia, North America, Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, India, the Dutch East Indies, China and Japan. In 1919 he closed his surgeon practice in Rotterdam. After an extended trip he settled in Amsterdam in 1923, where he dedicated himself to systematically broadening his print collection. He intended to bequeath this collection to the Museum Boijmans of Rotterdam, which he already had presented with occasional donations. He turned his main attention to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with an emphasis on the Dutch school. He ordered, classified, and described his collection in a card system. To provide the necessary funds for the purchase of prints, he established, in 1936, the Lucas van Leyden foundation, named after the Leiden engraver. In 1942, during World War II, the Germans confiscated Bierens de Haan’s house, but they did not take his collection. Several selections of the prints were temporarily on show in Museum Boijmans during the war. After the war, Bierens de Haan published two art historical studies, which both are proof of his scholarly approach to the field of engraving. In 1947 his monograph on the so-called Meester van het Amsterdamse Kabinet (Master of the Amsterdam cabinet), also known as the Hausbuch Meister, appeared. It dealt with 91 late fifteenth-century dry point engravings by this master, kept in the Amsterdam Print Room. Another publication, L’oeuvre gravé de Cornelis Cort, graveur hollandais, 1533-1578, followed in 1948, dedicated to the sixteenth-century Dutch engraver Cornelis Cort, who worked in several cities in Italy, including Venice, where he engraved Titian’s paintings. For this work, the 80 year old Bierens de Haan was awarded the golden museum medal. He never married. After his death, in 1951, he bequeathed his huge collection of 26,000 prints and his library to Museum Boijmans. The Lucas van Leyden foundation is up to the present day administered by the executive committee of the museum for the purchase of prints.
Selected Bibliography
De meester van het Amsterdamsch Kabinet, met reproducties in lichtdruk van het geheele gegraveerde werk. Amsterdam: A. A. Balkema, 1947; L’oeuvre gravé de Cornelis Cort, graveur hollandais, 1533-1578. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1948.
Sources
Lugt, Frits. Les marques de collections de dessins & d’estampes… Supplément. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1956, p. 69; Hannema, D. Flitsen uit mijn leven als verzamelaar en museumdirecteur. Rotterdam: Donker, 1973, p. 72; Bierens de Haan, J. C. “Bierens de Haan, Johan Catharinus Justus (1887-1951)” Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland 4 (1994): 37-39; [obituaries:] Ebbinge Wubben, J. C. Bulletin Museum Boijmans, Rotterdam. 3 (July 1952); Juynboll, W. R. “Johan Catharinus Justus Bierens de Haan (Leiden, 17 November 1867 – Amsterdam, 18 December 1951).” Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde, 1952-1953, p. 62-63.
Archives
- Collection Johan Catharinus Justus Bierens de Haan,
Leiden University Libraries. http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:1887443.
Contributors: Emily Crockett and Monique Daniels
Print collector, medical doctor; surgeon. Bierens de Haan was the son of David Bierens de Haan, professor of mathematics and physics at Leiden University, and Johanna Catharina Justina IJssel de Schepper. The young Bierens de Haan attended the Lei
Bier, Justus
Full Name: Bier, Justus
Gender: male
Date Born: 1899
Date Died: 1990
Place Born: Nuremberg (also Nürnberg), Germany
Place Died: Raleigh, Wake, NC, USA
Home Country/ies: Germany
Overview
Riemenschneider scholar, professor and director of the North Carolina Museum of Art. Bier grew up in a wealthy Nuremberg family. He attended the Humanistisches Gymnasium in that city. After graduation in 1917, he fought in the first World War 1917-18. Between 1919 and 1924 Bier studied art history, archaeology, and medieval and modern history at the universities in Munich, Erlangen, Jena, Bonn and finally Zürich. His major professors were Paul Clemen and Heinrich Wölfflin. His dissertation, written under Wölfflin, was on the early work of his home town’s most famous artist, Tilman Riemenschneider. It was granted in 1924 and published the following year. Between 1924-1930 Bier he began publishing his magisterial book on Riemenschneider while lecturing (Dozent) at the Volkschule. He also contributed articles on modern architecture. In 1931 he married the art historian Senta Dietzel (1900-1978), whose brother was the gallery owner Max Dietzel, a sponsor of the Künstlergruppe Brücke shows and other modern art. From 1930-36 Bier was a curator of the Kestner Society and Museum in Hannover which mounted contemporary art exhibitions. Bier himself collected the work of Bauhaus artists Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer and Lyonel Feininger. In 1936 the Nazi government closed the Kestner Society and banished Bier, who was Jewish. Bier withdrew first to upper Bavaria and then, in 1937 immigrated to the United States. His former classmate, Richard Krautheimer recommended Bier for the position he was vacating at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. Bier taught art history there 1937-60, acting as Chair of the department 1946-60. While Chair at Louisville, he founded the Allen R. Hite Institute. He was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, during the year 1953-54, and visiting professor at the Freie Universität, Berlin in 1956 and a Fulbright lecturer in Würzburg, 1960-61. He supplied over two hundred pieces of art criticism for the Louisville Courier Journal. In 1960, Bier was appointed to be the second director of the state art museum in North Carolina, replacing the late Wilhelm Rheinhold Otto Valentiner. He functioned as director of the North Carolina Museum of art until his retirement in 1970. His papers are housed at the University of Louisville where an endowed chair is named for him. Bier was a connoisseur-scholar who’s research focused principally on gothic and renaissance architecture and sculpture. He was an exponent of modern art and architecture and was friends with many Bauhaus architects (including Mies van der Rohe).
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation] Die Jugendwerke Tilmann Riemenschneider. Zürich, 1924. Reworked and reissued as volume one, Die frühen Werke, of the Würzburg 1925 set, below.”Riemenschneider’s Helpers in Need.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin ns 21 (June 1963): 317-26; “Two Statues: St. Stephen and St. Lawrence by Riemenschneider in the Cleveland Museum of Art.” Art Quarterly 23 (Autumn 1960): 214-27; “Riemenschneider’s St. Jerome and his Other Works in Alabaster.” The Art Bulletin 33 (December 1951): 226-34; “Riemenschneider’s Tomb of Emperor Henry and Empress Cunegund.” The Art Bulletin 29 (June 1947): 95-117; “Lyonel Feininger.” Die Kunst 65 (May 1932): 224-9; “Hundert Jahre Bauen; Ausstellung in Hannover.” Kunst und Kunstler 30 (October 1931): 33; Nürnbergisch fränkische Bilderkunst. Bonn: F. Cohen, 1922.;Tilmann Riemenschneider. 4 vols. Würzburg: Verlagsdruckerei Würzburg, 1925-1978; Tilmann Riemenschneider: His Life and Work. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1982. 0.Metzler
Sources
Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 50-5; “New Director of the North Carolina Museum of Art.” Art News 59 (February 1961): 8; Kentgens-Craig, Margret. “The Arts: Justus Bier, Second Director, NC Museum of Art.” They Fled Hitler’s Germany and Found Refuge in North Carolina. Southern Research Report 8. Chapel Hill, NC: Academic Affairs Library, Center for the Study of the American South, 1996. pp. 91-104.
Riemenschneider scholar, professor and director of the North Carolina Museum of Art. Bier grew up in a wealthy Nuremberg family. He attended the Humanistisches Gymnasium in that city. After graduation in 1917, he fought in the first World War 1917
Bielefeld, Erwin
Full Name: Bielefeld, Erwin
Gender: male
Date Born: 1907
Date Died: 1975
Place Born: Leipzig, Saxony, Germany
Place Died: Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, and Classical
Overview
Specialist in classical Greek and Roman art, particularly known for his focused interpretations and histories of single works of art. Forced to leave his university studies in 1935 because of the Jewish heritage of his father, but remained in Germany and survived a forced labor camp (Organization Todt) in France to return to Germany and resume his studies. After finishing his habilitation in 1947, began teaching at the University of Greifswald where he advanced to the rank of full professor in 1959. Due to a publishing ban placed on him by the communist leadership in East Germany in 1958, Bielefeld and his family emigrated to Munich in 1960, where with the help of Ernst Hohmann-Wedeking he was able to work as an ausserplanmäßige Professor until 1974.
Selected Bibliography
Amazonmachia. Halle, 1951. “Ein Delphinreiter-Chor” AA (1946/47): 48ff. “Eine attische Hydria in Leipzig” WürzbJbAtlWiss 2 (1947): 173ff. “Eine Iliupersis-Schale des Telephos-Malers” WürzbJbAtlWiss 2 (1947): 358ff Von griechischer Malerei. Halle, 1949. “Schmuck” ArchHom I C (1968)
Sources
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 303-304.
Specialist in classical Greek and Roman art, particularly known for his focused interpretations and histories of single works of art. Forced to leave his university studies in 1935 because of the Jewish heritage of his father, but remained in Germ
Bieber, Margarete
Full Name: Bieber, Margarete
Other Names:
- Margarete Bieber
Gender: female
Date Born: 1879
Date Died: 1978
Place Born: Przechowo, Kreis Swiece, Poland
Place Died: New Canaan, Fairfield, CT, USA
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): ancient and archaeology
Overview
Archaeologist and art historian of ancient theater. Bieber was the daughter of Jacob Heinrich Bieber, a factory owner, and Valli Bukofzer (Bieber). She was born in Schönau, Kreis Schwetz, Prussia, which is present-day Przechowo, Kreis Swiece, Poland. In 1899 she was privately tutored in Berlin, receiving her Abitur. In Berlin she studied under Hermann Diels (1848-1922), Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848-1931), and Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz. In 1904 she moved to Bonn to study under Georg Loeschke as well as Paul Clemen and Franz Bücheler (1837-1908). Bieber graduated from the University of Bonn in 1907, writing her dissertation under Loeschcke. One of the first female members of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (German Archaeological Insitute, or DAI) in 1913, she was the first to receive their prestigious travel fellowships in 1909. From then until 1914 she lived in Rome, where she met the German scholarly community working on classical art, such as Walther Amelung and Gerhart Rodenwaldt, Wilhelm Dörpfeld and the British discoverer of Minoan Crete, Arthur J. Evans. She returned to Germany to teach Loeschke’s classes in Berlin during World War I, privately because her gender prohibited an official appointment, between 1916-1918; her students at this time included Dora and Erwin Panofsky. In 1919 she moved to the University of Giessen where she was the second woman professor in that country. She was made a full professor in 1931. The Nazi dismissal of Jews from academic positions forced her to leave Germany in July, 1933. She emigrated first to England and an unsatisfactory year at Oxford. The following year she emigrated to the United States and taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, with William Bell Dinsmoor and Meyer Schapiro in the Department of Fine Arts. In New York, other female scholars, such as Gisela M. A. Richter, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mary Hamilton Swindler, and archaeologist Hetty Goldman (1881-1972) recommended assisted her. She was Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, 1935-1948. While at Columbia, she published The History of the Greek and Roman Theater (1939) and Laocoon, the Influence of the Group since Its Rediscovery (1942). She became an American citizen in 1940. Bieber retired from Columbia in 1948, continuing to lecture at Barnard, the New School for Social Research, and Princeton University. Her post-retirement years included publications such as Alexander the Great in Greek and Roman Art (1964), The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age (1955), and Ancient Copies (1977). She was awarded the Gold Medal for distinguished service by the Archaeological Institute of American in 1974, at age ninety-five. At the time of her death she was working on a book of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman dress, which remained unfinished. She died at her (adopted) daughter’s house in Connecticut in 1976. Through her writing and her reading selections of other art historians, Bieber helped disseminate the many of the more abstract art historical ideas of her German colleagues. Her German Readings in the History and Theory of Fine Arts (1946) kept primary source texts alive to modern art history students. Her own work incorporated the methods of Guido Kaschnitz von Weinberg and others. Her original research on Greek theater and sculpture, particularly the problem of Roman copies of Greek originals, remains a legacy. Her attempt to settle on a definitive interpretation of the Laocoön was countered in 2000 by Richard Brilliant.
Selected Bibliography
Die antiken Skulpturen und Bronzen des Konigl. Museum Fridericianum in Cassel. Marburg: N. G. Elwertsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1915; Die Denkmäler zum Theaterwesen im Altertum. Berlin: Vereinigung wissenschaftlicher Verleger, 1920; Griechische Kleidung. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1928; Entwicklungsgeschichte der griechischen Tracht von der vorgriechischen zeit bis zur römischen Kaiserzeit. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1934; The History of the Greek and Roman Theater. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1939; Laocoon: The Influences of the Group since its Discovery. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942; German Readings in the History and Theory of Fine Arts. New York: H. Bittner and company, 1946; The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955; The Statue of Cybele in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Malibu, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1968; Ancient copies: Contributions to the History of Greek and Roman Art. New York: New York University Press, 1977.
Sources
Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 46; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, p. 72; Contemporary Authors 17R; Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988, pp. 196-197; Bonfante, Larissa. “Bieber, Margarete.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, p. 159-60; Medwid, Linda M. The Makers of Classical Archaeology: A Reference Work. New York: Humanity Books, 2000 pp. 36-37; Bonfante, Larissa. “Bieber, Margarete.” American National Biography; Bonfante, Larissa, and Recke, Matthias. “Margarete Bieber: Two Worlds.” paper Breaking Ground: Women in Old World Archaeology. Brown University, 2004. ww.brown.edu/Research/Breaking_Ground/ bios/Bieber_Margarete.pdf .
Archives
- Margarete Bieber papers, Tulane University Special Collections. https://archives.tulane.edu/repositories/3/resources/985, LaRC-410.
Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen
Archaeologist and art historian of ancient theater. Bieber was the daughter of Jacob Heinrich Bieber, a factory owner, and Valli Bukofzer (Bieber). She was born in Schönau, Kreis Schwetz, Prussia, which is present-day Przechowo, Kreis Swiece, Pola