Sidney Littlefield Kasfir: 1939–2019

An ancestor marches on

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 African Arts’ First Word column and journal articles. In May 2005 I was in Nairobi, Kenya, to participate in the first Kuona Trust Residency on Public Arts and Installation together with Japanese artist Yukinori Yamamura and American artist Tim Curtis. At some point during the residency program, the story from our Kenyan colleagues was that the venerable Sidney Kasfir was in Nairobi. Before then, I had heard of her on the lips of older colleagues in Nigeria shortly after graduating from the Arts Program at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. It did not mean much to me at that time. However, there was something inestimable about Sidney’s rumored presence in Nairobi given the nature of chatters at the GoDown Art Center, in the heart of Nairobi’s industrial hub. I was intrigued. It is what we would describe in Nigeria as the aura of the huge masquerade that induces inimitable excitement and awe. I hoped for a chance encounter with Sidney but that did not happen in my two and half months stay in Kenya.

On the advice of my professors at the University of Western Cape at the end of my program in Museum and Heritage studies the following year, I contacted Sidney about the possibility of becoming her graduate student. It was a daunting proposition to contemplate given the impression I formed of her reputation during my time in Kenya. Sidney’s responsive email was too good to be true. The rest, as they say, is history. My graduate school experience was shaped by Sidney’s excellent mentorship and guidance. She always knew the right calibration between academic advisement and allowing the student the intellectual independence to come to certain terms in their scholarship. Graduate seminars were contexts to test out ideas, to push against the grain of received scholarship, and to look at old arguments with fresh eyes. In retrospect, the seeds of some of my curatorial projects such as The Art of Weapons at the Hood Museum of Art and the more recent Second Careers: Two Tributaries in African art at the Cleveland Museum of Art were planted during such seminar classes.

Sidney Kasfir

Photo: courtesy Emory University Art HIstory

Sidney celebrated her students. She had this legendary quirk that you are only allowed to call by her first name after you have successfully defended your dissertation. In a sense, this was the way she kept her students focused with their eyes on the prize but also the way she welcomed them into the collegial fold once they had earned the PhD. She offered encouragement, support, and will put in words when necessary during job search. Post-Emory University, it was always a pleasure to be at events with the professor emerita Sidney Kasfir in attendance. She kept a busy travel and research schedule in retirement. Here I briefly recall some instances: Nsukka, Nigeria in June 2015 during the Anya Fulu Ugo conference in honor of artists Obiora Udechukwu and El Anatsui, former art professors in the Nsukka program; and Kampala, Uganda, at the National Museum in August 2016 for the workshop African Art History and the Formation...