Elsa Honig Fine

Elsa Honig Fine

May 24, 1930–April 7, 2025

Elsa Honig Fine died peacefully in her sleep at home in Manhattan on April 7, 2025, at the age of 94. The second of the three children of Samuel Honig and Yetta Edith Honig, née Susskind, Elsa was born on May 24, 1930, in Bayonne, NJ, where her maternal grandfather had founded a wholesale paper goods business.

Elsa was a gifted visual artist. The caption of her high-school yearbook photo suggested that she would become a fashion designer. She studied fashion design in college, but switched to fine arts, with a focus on painting.

Elsa’s knowledge of art and art history was encyclopedic—and still vivid in the last years of her life. She continued to draw until her hand became unsteady. She collected American antiques, Japanese prints, art by women, African sculpture (especially Kota reliquary figures), and paintings by her friend Joseph Delaney.

Elsa met Harold J. Fine when she was earning her B.F.A. at Syracuse University and he was in graduate school, pursuing a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. They married on December 23, 1951.

Harold worked at V.A. hospitals, treating veterans, in Worcester, MA, and Palo Alto, CA, where he also did post-doctoral work at Stanford. At both locations, Elsa worked as an occupational therapist. Harold continued his post-doctoral studies at Yale, and worked at the V.A. hospital in Bridgeport, CT. During this time, two daughters, Erika Susan and Amy Minna, were born.

By 1962 the family moved to Doylestown, PA, where Harold co-founded a mental health clinic with Elsa’s older brother, Albert, a psychiatrist—the Honig-Fine Clinic. With her children in school, Elsa earned her M.Ed. at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. In 1967, the Fine family moved to Knoxville, TN, where Harold became the director of the graduate program in clinical psychology at the University of Tennessee, and opened a psychoanalytic psychology practice.

There, Elsa again returned to school, earning an Ed.D. at UT. She taught art history at Knoxville College, an HBCU, where she established the art history department and used her own foundational book, The Afro-American Artist: A Search for Identity (1973), as a textbook. Her book was groundbreaking, as it was the first textbook dedicated to the work of Black artists in America. After Elsa left that position, she published another pioneering textbook—Women and Art: A History of Women Painters and Sculptors from the Renaissance to the 20th Century (1978), the first one dedicated to women artists. Elsa cofounded the Women’s Caucus of the College Art Association, and, making use of her knowledge, convictions, and editorial expertise, she started The Woman’s Art Journal in 1980, a scholarly periodical dedicated to documenting both contemporary and historical women artists. In 2006, she retired and sold The Woman’s Art Journal to Rutgers University. Elsa received multiple awards, including the Woman’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996, the Distinguished Feminist Award from the College Art Association in 2001, and the Alumni Award from Tyler College in 2002.

An astute follower of politics and current events, Elsa read the New York Times daily for seventy-five years and watched both television news and figure-skating competitions with keen interest. Elsa was also a swimmer. She could be found doing her slow freestyle in oceans and pools everywhere, but she enjoyed lakes most of all. In her 80s, she was still diving into them. Elsa liked shooting baskets; her height gave her an advantage. She preferred simple, homemade food and, as a cook, her specialty was soup, whether chicken noodle, pea, matzoh ball, or vegetable. Her artist’s eye and training in fashion design gave her an expert appreciation of the craftsmanship of clothing. As a young adult, she designed her own clothes, including her wedding dress.

Harold passed away in 2009, after a protracted, debilitating illness, during which Elsa cared for him. In 2010, she moved to Manhattan—close to her granddaughter, Flora, and Amy and her husband, Brad—where she frequented art museums, galleries, and art fairs. She attended dance performances and particularly enjoyed Balanchine and Alvin Ailey. She went to classical-music concerts, read voraciously, both fiction and nonfiction, and watched movies, new and old. She had a great fund of knowledge about Hollywood films, intact until the end. She also spent time with her daughters and granddaughter. Her greatest joy was watching Flora grow up and become a published novelist.

Elsa was predeceased by her husband, Harold J. Fine; her parents, Samuel and Yetta Honig; and her brother, Albert Honig. She is survived by her daughters, Erika Fine and Amy Fine Collins (Bradley); her sister, Doris Honig Guenter; and many nieces, nephews, and cousins. A small service will take place at 12 noon at Doylestown Cemetery on April 19, 2025.

Please click here to view video.

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNVnHfj4P8oZdaVEBQhmRc907rieaJ7IeagApb1Lnx6ZL7daPb0awB53c2FozRKpA/photo/AF1QipOezh5ZpW8cQJ3q157aZplSDiPLVCsRMfahKji6?key=TldIcUxKV09VaGFXMXI3S21kazFBOW5CYVRkVi1R