Robert Farris Thompson, Leading Historian of Afro Atlantic Art and Civilization, Has Died at 88

Historian Robert Farris Thompson, who dedicated his life to the study and celebration of art and music of the Black Atlantic, has died at 88. Thompson joined the faculty at Yale University in 1965, only the second professor of African art history in the country. He worked for more than half a century at Yale, building a body of work that explored different subjects with sensitivity and reverence. He dismantled the idea that art, anthropology, music, and sociology were disparate fields by showing