Sidney Littlefield Kasfir died on December 29, 2019, in Nairobi, Kenya. She was born in York, Maine, on January 18, 1939, and earned a BA in astronomy and physics from Simmons College and a masters in Greek and Roman art history from Harvard before discovering African art while living in Uganda with her husband Nelson Kasfir. After directing the Nommo Gallery in Kampala, she earned a doctorate in African art history from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 1979. The majority of her career was spent teaching at Emory University, where she fostered the careers of numerous Africanist art historians, including Chika Okeke-Agulu, Peri Klemm, Elizabeth Morton, Sunanda Sanyal, Jessica Stephenson, Delinda Collier, Olubukola Gbadegesin, Jessica Gershultz, Amanda Hellman, myself, and many others.
Unlikemany scholars, I did not meet Sidney through the pages of her exacting scholarship and periodic critical interventions in the field via...