Katherine Tsanoff Brown, former dean of undergraduates, dies at 97

Katherine Tsanoff Brown, former dean of undergraduates and a professor emerita of art history, died Aug. 22. She was 97.

Katherine Tsanoff Brown

Brown, the daughter of Rice’s first philosophy professor, Radoslav Tsanoff, was raised on campus, entered the Rice Institute as a 15-year-old undergraduate and received her degree in 1938, said Rice historian Melissa Kean.

“Katherine Brown was quiet and strong and almost impossibly elegant,” Kean said. “She was a mediator … She was a scholar who remained committed to the primacy of undergraduate education. We were lucky to have her.”

Brown earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from Cornell University in 1940 and returned to Rice in 1963 as the university’s first art history instructor. She became a professor of art history in 1975 and also served as the university’s dean of undergraduate affairs from 1973 to 1983. She retired in 1989.

A medievalist art scholar, Brown was the recipient of numerous awards, including the George R. Brown Award for Excellence in Teaching.