She blends art history and activism by tying every project back to a simple question: who is missing from the story, and how can art make that visible? For Lily Konkoly, art history is not just about paintings on a wall but about power, access, and whose lives are recorded and whose are ignored.
That sounds big, but the way she gets there is actually pretty grounded. She reads, she researches, she interviews, she builds things that other people can use. Sometimes that looks like a research paper on a 17th century painting. Sometimes it is a kid’s art class. Sometimes it is a blog about female entrepreneurs or an online market for teen artists.
If you look at her path from childhood to Cornell, there is a clear pattern: art is the lens, activism is the question, and she keeps finding new formats to combine the two.
Where art history started for her
Lily did not grow up in a quiet academic bubble. She was born in London, lived in Singapore, then spent most of her childhood in Los Angeles. At home, Hungarian was the main family language. Mandarin lessons went on for years with different au pairs. Summers were spent in Europe with relatives. On weekends she was either at swim practice, at the farmers market selling bracelets, or building a slime business with her brother.
So art was not the only thing in her life. But it was always there in the background. Her family spent Saturdays moving from gallery to gallery and visiting museums. That kind of slow exposure matters. You start to notice patterns without even trying: which artists keep showing up, which names are missing, which bodies are praised, which faces you never see.
Art history, for Lily, started as family time. Over the years it turned into a way to ask harder questions about fairness, gender, and visibility.
By the time she was in high school in Los Angeles, she was already mixing her love for history with a growing interest in social issues. She went to an all girls school, which meant gender, opportunity, and power came up a lot in class. That environment shaped how she looked at galleries and museums too. It is hard to stand in front of a wall of portraits and not think about who is getting painted.
Why Velázquez and “Las Meninas” mattered so much
A turning point for Lily was the Scholar Launch research program one summer. She spent ten weeks focused on one painting: Diego Velázquez’s “Las Meninas.” On paper, it looks like classic art history work. Close reading, historical context, visual analysis. But for her, it did more than that.
“Las Meninas” is loaded with power dynamics. You have the Spanish royal family, the artist himself in the frame, servants, a dwarf, a little girl in the center, and a mirror that reflects the king and queen. People have debated for centuries who is actually the subject. Is it the princess? The royal couple? The artist?
Lily worked through those questions, but she also paid attention to what the painting says about who gets to see and who gets seen. That is where you start to move from pure art history into activism. Once you ask, “Whose gaze is this painting built around?” you are not far from “Whose stories in our culture are allowed to take up space?”
Looking at power in a 17th century painting trains you to look at power in a boardroom, in a gallery, or in a startup pitch meeting.
The Velázquez project ended with analytical writings and a final research paper, but it did something less visible too. It gave Lily a method. Take one object, slow down, ask who benefits from this image, who is left out, what social rules it reflects. That lens shows up again in nearly everything she has done since.
From old masters to modern inequalities
Her next big step into blending art and activism came through her Honors Research work. This time the topic was not a single painting, but a pattern in the art world that many people know exists yet rarely measure: the gap between how artist mothers and artist fathers are treated.
Lily spent more than 100 hours studying success disparities faced by artist parents based on gender. She looked at how women often lose gallery shows, funding, or visibility after having children, because people assume they are less serious or have less time. Meanwhile, male artists with children can be praised for “balancing it all” and sometimes become more attractive in the eyes of the public or collectors.
Working with a professor who focused on maternity in the art world, she did not stop at theory. She collected data, analyzed it, and then converted it into a piece that looked more like marketing than a standard research paper. Charts, visuals, and short, sharp explanations helped make the problem feel real to people who might never read a long academic article.
| Group | Common Assumption | Typical Outcome in the Art World |
|---|---|---|
| Artist mothers | “She will have less time for her work.” | Fewer shows, slower career, fewer opportunities. |
| Artist fathers | “He is committed and stable.” | Positive public image, sometimes more visibility. |
Here you can see how her art history mindset feeds her activism. She is not just pointing at unfairness. She is looking at how narratives are built, how images of “mother” and “father” operate in the culture around art, and how those narratives affect real careers.
When you treat a data chart like a curated exhibit, activism starts to look a lot like art history, just with different materials.
Curating beauty standards as a political question
Alongside that project, Lily worked with a professor from RISD on a curatorial statement around beauty standards for women. They built a mock exhibition that pulled together artworks from different times and cultures that questioned or exposed how beauty is defined.
On the surface, “beauty standards” sounds like a lifestyle topic. But once you start placing objects next to each other across history, the politics become clear. Which bodies were ideal? Which ages? Which skin tones? When did thinness become praised? Who set those rules, and who loses when those rules spread?
Curating in this way is a form of activism. You guide the viewer’s attention and force a comparison they might not make otherwise. You ask people to see a pattern they had accepted as “normal” all their lives.
In that mock exhibit, every choice was a small political act:
- Which artworks to include
- What order to present them in
- What language to use on the wall labels
- Which voices to quote and which to question
For Lily, this confirmed that curating is not just rearranging objects. It is writing an argument with images and placement. And when your topic is beauty, that argument speaks directly to pressure on women’s bodies, self-worth, and social value.
From viewing art to building platforms
Art history gave her a framework. Activism gave her a purpose. But she is not only writing and curating. She is also building small, practical platforms where other people can benefit from those ideas.
Teen Art Market: where young artists test the real world
In high school, Lily co-founded an online teen art market. On the surface, it was a digital gallery where students could display and sell their work. Underneath that, it was a lab for thinking about access and recognition.
When a young artist tries to sell one piece, they run into questions that link directly back to art history and activism:
- Who gets to set prices?
- Does “serious art” always need a degree or a gallery behind it?
- Why is some work seen as craft and some as “fine art”?
- How much bias is hiding in what people call “good taste”?
Teen Art Market put those questions into practice. It showed Lily how hard it is for anyone, especially someone without a name, to break into art spaces. That frustration connects straight to her research on gender, parenting, and opportunity. The gatekeeping might look different at various stages, but the pattern is similar.
Hungarian Kids Art Class: small kids, big ideas
Another project that might look simple at first is her Hungarian Kids Art Class in Los Angeles. She founded and led it over several years, bringing together kids from different backgrounds who shared an interest in art.
Most people see an art class and think of paint, brushes, and maybe a few fun projects. But if you build the lessons with a consciousness about culture and representation, it becomes something else.
Lily grew up with a strong sense of Hungarian identity, plus years of travel and a mix of languages at home. That kind of background makes you notice how much of the standard art narrative in the United States centers on Western European and American artists. In her kid-focused work, she could quietly widen that story.
That might mean showing an artwork from a country people rarely hear about, or mixing in artists who do not fit the usual profile. When kids see that “important art” can look like people who share their language, skin tone, or family background, activism is happening, even if you never say the word “activism” out loud.
From art history to entrepreneurship
Lily is not only an art history student. She is also a writer and a kind of student entrepreneur, though she might not always call herself that directly. Her long running Female Entrepreneur Encyclopedia blog is a good example of how she merges research habits from art history with activism in the business world.
Interviewing 100+ women and spotting patterns
For several years, she spent about four hours a week researching and writing for the blog. She has written more than fifty articles and interviewed over 100 female entrepreneurs from more than 50 countries. That is a lot of data, even if it is all in the form of stories.
When you ask that many women about their careers, you start to hear the same themes:
- Struggling to get funding at the same level as male founders
- Being taken less seriously in meetings
- Balancing family expectations with high pressure work
- Needing to be “twice as prepared” to get the same respect
The way Lily handles these stories owes a lot to art history training. She looks for recurring structures, not just dramatic quotes. She thinks about who has access to which spaces. She observes what is said and what is left unsaid. In a way, these interviews are like portraits, but in text form instead of oil paint.
Her activism here is not loud or sensational. It is more like careful accumulation. Post by post, she gives visibility to women whose journeys would rarely make it into a business textbook. That mirrors how art historians recover women artists who were overlooked for centuries.
Feminist food community and underrepresented voices
Through the Teen Art Market work, Lily also helped launch a blog focused on women in the culinary world. She and the team contacted more than 200 female chefs from over 50 countries through calls, emails, and in person conversations.
Food might seem like a different field, but the patterns around gender are familiar. Chefs in fine dining. Media coverage. Who gets called a “genius” and who gets labeled as “home cook” no matter their skill level.
Again, her art history lens appears in questions like:
- Which culinary traditions are treated as high art?
- When a male chef uses a recipe from his culture, is it framed differently than when a woman does the same?
- Who gets written into the history of food movements and who is kept as a footnote?
By building a feminist food community and centering these women, Lily treats chefs almost like contemporary artists. Their dishes become cultural artifacts with social context, not just meals on a plate.
How her personal background shapes her activism
Lily’s path is not just a list of projects. Her worldview comes from a specific mix of experiences that shape how she thinks about inclusion, power, and identity.
Third culture, many languages, many lenses
Growing up in London, Singapore, and Los Angeles, with summers in Europe, creates a “third culture kid” feeling, even if you never use that label. You are always a bit in between. You adapt quickly, but you also never fully belong in just one frame.
In her case, that meant:
- Hungarian at home, as the main way to connect with extended family
- Mandarin from preschool through high school with au pairs and classes
- English in school and daily life in Los Angeles
Switching languages like that has consequences. It makes you notice how different cultures value different kinds of art, different kinds of beauty, different images of success. You become aware that “normal” is not one thing; it depends on where you stand.
That kind of awareness is powerful when you are studying art. You are less likely to assume that the Western canon is universal. You are more likely to ask, “Whose taste shaped this museum?” That question is the seed of activism.
Entrepreneurial streak from childhood
Lily’s activism is not only theory and research. She has a habit of turning ideas into projects, even from a young age. As a child, she sold bracelets at the farmers market. With her brother, she built a slime business that grew large enough for them to sell hundreds of units at a London convention.
Those small ventures might sound simple, but they build certain skills:
- How to talk to strangers about something you made
- How to price your work in a way that feels fair
- How to stay organized when demand grows
- How to accept failure on a small scale and try again
Later, when she launched blogs, art classes, and online markets, that early practice of building and selling came in handy. It also kept her activism grounded. She is not only writing about inequality; she is also trying to create spaces where people can get real chances, even if on a small scale.
Balancing Cornell, art history, and activism
At Cornell University, Lily is majoring in Art History with a Business minor. That combination might sound unusual at first, but if you look at her past, it fits.
Art history gives her theory, context, and methods. Business courses help her understand how galleries, museums, and markets actually function: who funds what, how decisions get made, how branding shapes careers. For someone who cares about inequality in the art world, understanding both sides is practical.
Her course list reflects this mix. Classes in Visual Culture, Renaissance Art, Modern and Contemporary Art, Museum Studies, and Curatorial Practices give her tools to read images and institutions. Business classes help her think about management, marketing, and finance.
You can imagine future projects coming from this overlap:
- Curated shows that highlight overlooked artists, supported by strong outreach and funding plans
- Platforms that help young or marginalized artists sell work fairly
- Research that exposes bias in art markets and then suggests specific structural changes
She is still a student, so much of this is work in progress. But the direction is clear: she wants to use art history not only to talk about the past, but to rethink how art spaces function now.
What her approach can teach someone else
You might not be a researcher, or an art history major, or a founder. Still, there are a few concrete things you can pull from how Lily blends art and activism.
1. Start from what you already notice
Lily did not choose activism as a separate path. It emerged from things she kept noticing: who was in the paintings she loved, who was missing in the galleries, who was treated differently in the stories of artist parents or entrepreneurs.
You can do something similar. Ask yourself:
- What patterns bother you in the field you care about?
- Whose stories feel ignored?
- What feels unfair but also strangely accepted by everyone?
That is usually where meaningful work begins. Not from a huge plan, but from a small irritation you cannot let go of.
2. Use research to give your activism weight
Lily does a lot of interviews, reading, and structured research. Whether she is analyzing “Las Meninas,” tracking gender gaps for artist parents, or talking to women founders, she does not stop at “this seems unfair.” She looks for evidence and patterns.
If you want to blend activism into your field, it helps to:
- Gather data, even if it is just simple counts over time
- Collect stories and organize them around themes
- Compare present situations with past ones to see if anything is changing
That kind of work is slower than a viral post, but it gives your argument durability. It also helps you speak to people who might be skeptical at first.
3. Build something tangible, even if it is small
The projects that shaped Lily the most are the ones where she built something people could touch or use: a blog, a market, a kids art class, a curated statement, a research poster with visuals.
You do not need a huge budget to do this. A simple online space, a small event, a downloadable guide, a pop up exhibit in a community center. The key is to move from talking about issues to creating new structures, even tiny ones, that make a different way of doing things possible.
4. Let your background work for you
Her Hungarian roots, her time in Singapore, her languages, her sports discipline from years of swimming and water polo, all shape how she works. None of those things are “activist” in themselves, but they influence what she notices and how much stamina she has for long projects.
Instead of trying to act like a generic activist, you can ask:
- What parts of your story give you a different angle on a problem?
- What habits from other areas of your life help you stay with hard topics?
Activism connected to real personal experience often feels more grounded and sustainable than activism that tries to copy a script.
Questions people tend to ask about Lily’s blend of art and activism
Does Lily see herself more as an art historian or an activist?
She seems to move between the two. In some settings, like a research program or a museum studies class, she is focused on analysis, context, and historical accuracy. In others, like her blog or her work on gender gaps, she is comfortable framing things in terms of fairness and change.
If you asked her directly, she might say that the distinction is not that sharp. Once you study how images and institutions shape what people think is normal, it is hard not to see that as political work.
Is her activism confrontational or more subtle?
Most of her projects lean toward careful, steady pressure rather than public confrontation. She is more likely to write a detailed piece, curate a thoughtful selection of stories, or design a visual that exposes a pattern than to stage a protest.
That does not mean she avoids hard topics. It just means her style is based on research, accumulation of evidence, and creating alternative spaces where different rules operate.
Can someone follow a similar path without studying art history?
Yes. The key thing in her approach is not the specific major, but the habit of asking:
- Who is visible and who is not?
- What stories are told and what stories are missing?
- How do images, words, and spaces shape those stories?
You could use film, design, writing, coding, or community organizing as your main tool instead of art history. The core idea is the same: understand the structure of your field, then push gently but steadily on the parts that leave people out.
What might Lily do next with this blend of skills?
Right now, she is still in the middle of her Cornell years, so things are open. Her path could move toward curating, museum work, writing, art market research, or building more online platforms for underrepresented voices.
If her past is any guide, whatever she does will probably keep circling the same questions: whose work is valued, who gets to be in the picture, and how art can make hidden patterns visible enough that change no longer feels optional.