Kelsey Ann Siegert is a Ph.D. student focusing on anglophone art of the long nineteenth century. Originally from Las Vegas, NV, she received her bachelor’s from Seattle University. She went on to complete her master’s in art history at the University of Georgia. Her thesis, “Vision in the Darkened Room: Science and Spirit in the Art of Georgiana Houghton” repositioned the Victorian medium and artist’s abstract watercolors within the context of emerging nineteenth century theories of vision and space. Kelsey approaches art history through a lens of social epistemology. Her research interests center material intersections between esoteric knowledge, the shifting margins of science, and gender and sexuality. She seeks to understand art’s role in the manufacturing of shared cultural truths. Kelsey is currently the William J. Thompson curatorial fellow in American Art at the Georgia Museum of Art, a fellowship which will culminate in an exhibition on Thompson, a Georgia based sculptor and printmaker, in 2029. Most recently she gave a talk titled, “Feminine Arts | Fraternal Orders: Masonic Materiality in 19th-Century Georgia” for Decorative Art’s Trust’s Spring Symposium as their 2026 John A. H. Sweeney Emerging Scholar Lecturer.
The College of Arts