Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Kayleigh Danowski ’25 is an undergraduate concentrating in history of art and architecture and psychology. A Resumed Undergraduate Education (RUE) student, she was a professional ballet dancer before retiring to pursue life beyond the stage at Brown. She is broadly interested in understanding the social underpinnings of society through the lens of art and material culture. Her project, tentatively titled “Domestic Labor and Artistic Pursuits: Finding Female Agency in the Early 20th-Century United States,” examines how women used decorative art and traditional craft in the home as both a site of domestic reproduction and as a source of agency, particularly at the intersection of race and class. She locates her research in a time where decorative arts rapidly became accessible due to mass production, and in an area — the Northeastern U.S. — that saw shifting racial demographics and major developments in decorative arts theory, consumerism, and gender activism. She is intent on shifting focus beyond the canon of fine arts to unravel the complex relationship between women, art, and everyday life.