In Memoriam: Sidney Carolyn Littlefield Kasfir, 1939-2019

Sidney Littlefield Kasfir, professor emerita of art history at Emory University in Atlanta, died in late December in Nairobi, Kenya, where she lived on a farm with her husband. She had contracted malaria and developed a pulmonary embolism among other complications. Dr. Littlefield Kasfir was 80 years old.

After teaching at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, Dr. Kasfir joined the Emory University faculty in 1989. She was an internationally renowned scholar of contemporary African art and served as faculty curator of the African art collections in the Michael C. Carlos Museum at the university. In 2017, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Arts Council of the African Studies Association. Dr. Kafir retired from teaching at Emory in 2011.

Professor Kasfir was a graduate of what is now Simmons University n Boston, where she majored in physics and astronomy. She held a master’s degree in classical Greek and Roman art from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in African art history from the London School of Oriental and African Studies.