Modern art history is usually told through big names, big museums, and big theories. What makes Lily Konkoly different is that she is quietly rebuilding that story around something far more personal: how art intersects with gender, parenting, cultural identity, and the everyday choices families make for their children. She is not just asking what hangs on the museum wall. She is asking who gets to make it, whose life fits around that work, and what that means for the next generation growing up in front of those images.
That shift might sound small on paper. It is not small if you are a mother trying to keep a career alive, a teenager wondering if there is space for art and a future family, or a parent who wants a child to see something more honest on gallery walls than the same old myths.
Why a young art historian matters for parents and kids
Art history can feel very far away from parenting and child safeguarding. Old paintings. Old stories. Quiet galleries.
But once you start asking who made the art, when they made it, and what was happening in their personal lives, it gets close to home very fast.
Lily studies questions like:
- What happens to a woman artist when she decides to have a child?
- Why do father artists often get praised for “doing it all,” while mother artists are quietly judged or forgotten?
- How do museum displays shape what children think is possible for their own lives?
These are not only academic questions. They are parenting questions.
Art history is not just about the past. It shapes what children believe about what they are allowed to become.
Lily brings that idea into her work and her life. She does research on gender gaps in the art world, runs a female entrepreneurship blog, builds spaces for teen artists, and has taught art to children with a gentle focus on culture and identity. All of that feeds into a different kind of modern art history, one that cares about real families and real children, not just big theories.
From London to Singapore to Los Angeles: how a childhood builds a lens
Lily was born in London, moved to Singapore as a toddler, then grew up in Los Angeles. Her extended family is Hungarian, and most of them are still in Europe. So her sense of “home” has never been just one country.
That matters more than it seems.
As a child in Singapore, she attended a half American, half Chinese preschool and started learning Mandarin. When the family moved to Los Angeles, her Chinese teacher followed as an au pair and lived with them for about six years. After that, more Chinese au pairs joined them. The language stayed present, not just as a school subject, but as part of daily life: conversations at home, tutoring, recordings for her mother’s YouTube channel.
At the same time, Hungarian was the language of cousins, grandparents, and nearly everyone they visited in Europe every summer. Hungarian became both a bridge to family and a “secret language” in the United States.
So very early, Lily lived in three different cultural worlds at once. English, Hungarian, Mandarin. London, Singapore, Los Angeles. Europe in the summers.
For a child, that means:
- Constantly switching context, tone, and expectations
- Seeing that there is no single “normal” way to live or parent or create
- Reading subtle differences in behavior and values
That kind of upbringing naturally creates a habit of comparison. It shows up in her later work. When she studies how women artists are treated after having children, she is not only reading data. She is pulling from a life that has already watched cultures handle family, gender, and work in very different ways.
Children who grow up between cultures often become quiet observers. That same skill can turn into powerful, careful art history.
For parents, this is a reminder that:
– A child who seems “caught between worlds” may actually be learning to read context with great care.
– That sensitivity can evolve into strong research, empathy, and critical thinking later on.
A family that treats learning as daily life
The way Lily’s family handled learning will sound familiar to many parents who try to build a rich home environment without turning their house into a pressure cooker.
It was not just about grades. It was about projects, shared hobbies, and curiosity that spilled into weekends.
Some examples:
- Chess tournaments most weekends when she was six or seven
- Cooking and baking together in the kitchen, sometimes on camera
- YouTube videos of language practice and food experiments
- Small businesses like slime sales and handmade bracelets at markets
At one point, the children were invited to appear on shows like Rachael Ray and Food Network. The family turned those offers down because the filming would have filled the entire summer. They chose travel and extended family in Europe instead.
There is a quiet parenting message inside this choice. You do not have to chase every big opportunity, even if it looks impressive from the outside. Sometimes saying “no” protects time for identity, rest, and connection.
That choice also shaped Lily’s path. Time in Europe reinforced her Hungarian roots and cultural awareness. It also kept her from burning out young on “performance” and public exposure. That kind of balance matters for children who show early talent.
Entrepreneurial experiments: what slime and bracelets have to do with art
Lily and her siblings did what many creative kids do. They turned their hobbies into small ventures.
They sold bracelets at the local farmers market in the Pacific Palisades. Later, Lily and her brother became deeply focused on slime. They had a slime business, shipped products, and even traveled to London for a slime convention where they sold hundreds of containers in a single day.
That might sound like a minor childhood story, but it is part of how she now studies art.
A young person who:
– Prices their own goods
– Deals with customers
– Manages stock and travel
– Sees what sells and what does not
will later view the “art market” as something real, not abstract. When Lily went on to co-found a teen art market, she already understood that selling creative work is hard work. It is not magic. It is not just talent. It is systems, visibility, and social bias.
For parents, this suggests a simple, concrete takeaway:
Letting children sell their own creations, even on a tiny scale, can teach them how value, effort, and recognition actually work in the real world.
That lesson becomes crucial if a child later walks into fields like art, writing, or music where the “star system” can feel random and unfair.
From museums as weekend trips to a college major
Growing up in Los Angeles, Lily’s family treated art spaces as part of normal life. Many Saturdays were spent visiting galleries and museums. You can imagine the pattern: parking somewhere downtown, walking between shows, talking about what they had just seen.
Over time, this kind of routine does something quiet but deep:
– Children stop seeing museums as strange or intimidating.
– They start forming their own opinions about what they like and do not like.
– Art stops being “fancy” and becomes part of everyday conversation.
By the time Lily started thinking about college, art was not only a hobby. It was a way of thinking she knew she could go deeper into.
She went on to Cornell University to study Art History with a minor in Business. That pairing is interesting. On the surface, art history and business look far apart. In her work, they intersect sharply: who gets funded, who gets shown, who sells, and who stays invisible.
Early research: reading a single painting like a story about power
Before college, Lily joined the Scholar Launch Research Program and spent 10 weeks focused on a single masterpiece: “Las Meninas” by Diego Velázquez.
Most people see a famous painting and move on after a quick read of the label. Ten weeks on one painting is a different experience. It trains you to look, then look again, then question what you thought you saw.
“Las Meninas” is not just a picture of a royal child with her entourage. It is also about:
– Who is placed at the center of attention
– How the painter represents himself inside the work
– What roles women and children play within power structures
– How spectators are pulled into the scene as if they are part of the royal family
Spending so much time with that painting helps explain why Lily later moved toward questions of gender, status, and visibility. The seeds are right there. Who is visible, who is marginal, who is reflected in the mirror, and who stands in the shadows.
Gender, parenting, and the art world: her honors research
One of Lily’s most direct contributions to a new kind of modern art history comes from her honors research project in high school.
She studied the success gap between artist mothers and artist fathers.
Her focus was simple at first glance but quite hard to ignore once she looked closely:
– Women artists often lose opportunities when they have children.
– People assume they will be less committed or less available.
– Their exhibitions, residencies, and sales can slow down or stall.
On the other side:
– Male artists who become fathers are often seen as more stable or admirable.
– They sometimes receive extra praise for “balancing” career and family.
– Their public image can even improve.
You can feel how close this is to many families’ real life questions.
– Can we afford for one partner to take more time off?
– How will our careers look after a baby arrives?
– Will people treat us differently as professionals once we have children?
Lily did not just stop at ideas. She:
- Spent over 100 hours on the project one summer
- Dug into data and real cases in the art world
- Worked with a professor who studies maternity in the arts
- Created a marketing style visual piece to show how gender roles are still stitched into the system
For an art historian, this kind of work is not decorative. It shifts what “modern art history” even includes. It says that you cannot talk about an artist’s output without talking about what their life allowed or blocked.
For readers who care about child safeguarding, there is a clear line here. When women lose opportunities because they have children, the cost is not just personal. It shapes what kind of art exists in the world for those children to see.
If mothers are pushed out of creative work, children lose access to their stories, their images, and their ways of seeing the world.
This brings parenting into art history in a direct way. It is not a side note.
From research to real impact: creating spaces for teens and kids
Lily has not kept her interest in art, gender, and identity inside academic walls. She has created programs and platforms that involve real teenagers and children.
Hungarian Kids Art Class: art as a bridge to culture
For three years in Los Angeles, she ran the Hungarian Kids Art Class. She gathered children, many from diverse backgrounds, and built a community around art.
What makes a kids art class meaningful for long term thinking, not just for fun in the moment?
Several things:
- It gives children a place to express feelings that may not fit into everyday conversation.
- It can connect them with their cultural roots through stories, symbols, and colors.
- It shows that creativity is not separate from identity, but part of it.
In her case, Hungarian heritage played a clear role. Children with immigrant or mixed backgrounds often feel that their “other” language or culture is something they have to manage quietly. An art class that treats heritage as a source of ideas instead of something awkward can reshape a child’s self image.
For parents, a practical idea here is simple:
– Look for or create creative spaces where your child’s languages and cultures are included, not erased.
It does not have to be grand. It can be weekend sketching rooted in family stories. Or collages about where grandparents came from.
Teen Art Market: a small training ground for creative independence
Lily also co founded an online Teen Art Market. Students could showcase and sell their work and get a feel for what it means to bring art into a public space.
From the outside, that might sound like a small blog or shop. For the teenagers involved, it meant:
- Learning how to photograph, describe, and present their work
- Seeing which pieces drew attention and which did not
- Understanding basic pricing, communication, and delivery
- Realizing that art careers include a lot of unglamorous tasks
This connects directly back to her interest in gender inequality. If young artists, especially girls, can practice this early, they may be better prepared to navigate biased systems later on.
For children, this kind of experience sends a clear message: your work has value, and you are allowed to take it seriously.
Female entrepreneurs, art, and the stories young people hear
Parallel to her art projects, Lily has spent several years running the Female Entrepreneur Encyclopedia blog. She has written more than 50 articles and interviewed over 100 women in business from around the world.
You might ask: how is this related to modern art history?
It connects in at least three ways.
1. Patterns of inequality repeat
Again and again, she heard similar themes:
– Women working longer or harder to be seen as credible
– Assumptions that they would leave or slow down after having children
– A lack of visible role models who combined leadership and caregiving
These stories echo what she later tracks in the art world. The setting changes, but the pattern stays.
For a young art historian, this creates a unified picture:
When you listen to enough women in different fields, you see that bias is not an accident. It is built into the structure of work, including creative work.
2. Storytelling shapes what children believe is possible
Children pick up messages indirectly. When they see more interviews with male leaders than female leaders, or when the women they see are praised mostly for their appearance or their “supportive” roles, they quietly learn limits.
By building a library of real, detailed stories from women founders, Lily adds a different kind of archive to the world. In a way, it is another form of “modern history,” told in words instead of paintings.
Parents can make use of this approach quite easily:
- Share real stories of women and men who balance work and care in different ways.
- Talk about those stories with children, not just as “inspiration,” but as real people with trade offs.
3. Intersection of art, business, and care
Because Lily studies both art history and business, her work hints at a future where:
– Curators think about childcare when they schedule residencies or shows
– Galleries consider the family lives of artists they invite
– Funding bodies track how their grants reach or ignore artist parents
This is where modern art history shifts from description to design. It starts to ask not just “What happened?” but “How should we build things now, so that creative parents do not have to disappear?”
Discipline, sport, and the body behind the mind
It might be easy to see Lily only as a student and researcher. That would miss a big part of what keeps her grounded.
She spent about ten years as a competitive swimmer, often training six days a week, with long sessions and all day meets. When many teammates left for college and the team dynamic changed, she switched to water polo for three years.
During the COVID pool closures, her team moved training to the ocean. Two hours a day in open water is a different level of effort. There are no lane lines. No safe edges. The water is colder and more unpredictable.
This matters for her work in at least two ways:
- It builds a strong tolerance for slow progress and discomfort.
- It teaches her own limits and how far she can push without breaking.
Those same traits show up when you spend 10 weeks analyzing one painting, or 100 hours tracking gender patterns.
For young people who look up to her, it is a subtle reminder that intellectual work is not just “brain power.” It benefits from a body that has done hard things and learned resilience.
Language skills, travel, and why modern art history cannot be local
Lily speaks English and Hungarian fluently, has working proficiency in Mandarin, and some French. She has visited more than 40 countries and lived on three continents.
This matters for modern art history because:
– Many core texts and archives are not in English.
– Cultural ideas about gender and parenting differ widely by region.
– Art scenes in Asia, Europe, and the Americas follow different patterns of support and neglect.
A person who can read, listen, and move between these worlds can compare not only artworks, but systems:
| Area | Questions Lily can ask |
|---|---|
| Language | How do terms for “mother” or “father” artists differ across cultures? |
| Policy | Which countries give parental support that helps artists keep working? |
| Education | How often do art programs teach about caregiving and gender in their core courses? |
| Representation | Which museums show artist parents openly as parents, not just as isolated geniuses? |
When modern art history asks these questions, it becomes something that can inform how families and schools structure support for creative children.
What parents and educators can take from Lily’s path
You might not be raising a future art historian. That is fine. The ideas in Lily’s story still have direct use for you.
Here are a few practical points that connect her path to everyday family life.
1. Treat culture and language as resources, not burdens
Lily’s Hungarian and Mandarin worlds were treated as strengths, not problems to fix. That helped her see cultural complexity as normal.
For your own family:
- If you have heritage languages, keep using them in daily life.
- Bring those languages into art, stories, and creative projects.
- Talk openly about different cultural expectations, including around gender and work.
2. Expose children to art early, but let them have opinions
Weekend gallery trips shaped Lily without turning art into a chore. What seems helpful is that:
– The visits were regular, not rare “big events.”
– She was allowed to like or dislike what she saw.
When children feel pressure to “be impressed,” they shut down. When they feel allowed to say “I do not get this,” they stay engaged.
3. Teach the reality of work behind creative careers
Through slime businesses, teen markets, and her blog, Lily saw that creative lives include:
– Rejection
– Slow sales
– Hard logistics
– Communication and finance problems
Sharing this with teenagers does not kill their dreams. It makes the dreams sturdier. They can plan, not just hope.
4. Talk openly about gender, parenting, and careers
Lily’s research brings a difficult topic to the surface: how becoming a parent can affect creative opportunities differently for men and women.
You can bring this into family conversations in age appropriate ways:
- Ask your child what they notice in stories, films, or museums about mothers and fathers.
- Point out both mothers and fathers who keep creating, and discuss what support they have.
- Ask teenagers what they imagine for their own future family and work, and listen without rushing to reassure.
The goal is not to make them worry early. It is to avoid surprising them later.
A small Q&A to bring it back to you
Q: I am not in the art world. Why should I care about what Lily studies?
Because the same patterns that shape who becomes a “famous artist” also shape who gets promoted at work, whose caregiving is taken for granted, and which stories your children see as important. Her field is art history, but the questions reach into everyday family life.
Q: How can I support my child if they are interested in art but I am worried about their future?
You do not have to choose between care and realism. You can:
- Encourage their creative work and share artists who built long, steady careers.
- Teach practical skills early, like basic business, time management, and communication.
- Talk about bias and inequality honestly, so they are not blindsided.
Lily’s path shows that it is possible to combine art with research, entrepreneurship, and language skills. Art does not have to be a narrow road.
Q: What does “redefining modern art history” actually mean in her case?
It means she is shifting focus from just “what is on the wall” to:
- Who made it and what their family life looked like
- How gender and parenting helped or hurt their chances
- How culture, language, and childhood shaped their vision
When those questions become normal in art history, the field starts to serve real families better. It can help parents, schools, and communities build worlds where creative children do not have to choose between art, identity, and future family life.