What Katy Did Next

WHAT KATY DID NEXT

The curator and broadcaster Katy Hessel is on a mission to restore women to the art canon

Photography by Ameena Rojee

I’m not very good at being interviewed,” Katy Hessel laughs – an infectious sound that might explain why she is so good at drawing people out of themselves for her popular podcast The Great Women Artists. During her career to date, Hessel, 28, has interviewed artists such as Cornelia Parker, Lubaina Himid and Phyllida Barlow, as well as prominent scholars, curators and critics including Griselda Pollock, Helen Molesworth and Olivia Laing. She has curated exhibitions, presented for the BBC and is an arts consultant and adviser, matchmaking artists with galleries.

In September, Hessel publishes her first book, The Story of Art Without Men, which aims to redress Ernst Gombrich’s seminal 1950 book The Story of Art. Intended as an insight into “at least a fraction of the work by non-male artists who have contributed to ‘the story of art’”, its tone is crystallised in a quote from 1649 by Artemisia Gentileschi: “I’ll show you what a woman can do.”

This also neatly sums up Hessel’s all-consuming passion. We’re sitting in a cafe in Dalston, not too far from where she grew up in Crouch End. She was introduced to art at age six when her eldest sister started to take her to exhibitions at the V&A, the National Gallery and the newly completed Tate Modern.

“I realised there was a whole ecosystem of artists who had been largely ignored because of their gender”

It was the early 2000s, and London’s art scene was flourishing – Hessel recalls being struck by exhibitions by Anish Kapoor, Rachel Whiteread and Louise Bourgeois. “You couldn’t not be amazed by it,” she recalls. “I remember the first time I got on the Tube by myself, when I went to see Chris Ofili at Tate Britain. I would get up early so I could go and watch Christian Marclay’s The Clock [a virtuoso video work that splices existing footage of clocks to match its 24-hour length] at White Cube before school.”

Hessel went on to study a BA in art history at UCL, but her feminist awakening came later. A turning point was seeing portraits by American painter Alice Neel. “I couldn’t believe she wasn’t recognised, she was incredible,” says Hessel. “Then I realised there was this whole ecosystem of artists who had been largely ignored because of their gender.” An arresting 1973 portrait by Neel of the art historian Linda Nochlin – whose 1971 essay Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? inspired Hessel’s Instagram handle and podcast – and her daughter Daisy features in the introduction to The Story of Art Without Men.

Katy Hessel in the Library Stacks

In 2015 Hessel visited Frieze Masters, the historical section of the annual Frieze Art Fair, and didn’t see a single work by a woman. “I was shocked, I literally couldn’t sleep that night,” she says. Out of her frustration, the Instagram account @thegreatwomenartists was born: a platform for provoking conversation about the lack of representation of female artists and in particular “making it accessible for my generation”.

“Instagram was free, and I could do it on my phone. It was the ultimate millennial approach to writing”

At that point Instagram was mostly a platform for sharing selfies and personal images, but Hessel saw an opportunity. “It was free, and I could do it on my phone. It was the ultimate millennial approach to writing,” she says. Bringing the conversation about gender representation in the arts to a wide audience is still at the core of what she does. “I’m jumping on the shoulders of amazing art scholars who have built this history for us, but I always want to be in tune with my generation and how they consume knowledge.” The account’s popularity soared, and now has more than 275,000 followers.

The London Library has become a fundamental research source because of its “incredibly rich selection of art books”, says Hessel. “I’ve found titles on all sorts of artists who have been overlooked. And it’s located close to all the galleries.”

She has keenly engaged with the Library community, including its events programme. “I loved interviewing Jennifer Higgie last year about her book – and I’m very excited that she will interview me about mine at the Library this autumn.” The Australian author of The Mirror and the Palette, about female self-portraits through history, is a former editor of Frieze magazine, and has been similarly mining the history of female artists.

The Only Blonde in the World, 1963, by Pop artist Pauline Boty.

Photo: The estate of Pauline Boty/Tate

It was Hessel’s podcast, launched in 2019, that cemented her reputation. She enlisted a friend to teach her the basics of audio recording, then taught herself how to edit. Her first guests included Juno Calypso, a fêted young British photographer, and Es Devlin, the celebrated stage designer. She also spoke to Zoé Whitley, the Chisenhale Gallery director (and then Tate curator) about the AfricanAmerican artist Betye Saar, and hosted Tate Modern director Frances Morris, “who I knew because I met her once at customs at JFK airport”.

Now in its seventh series, the podcast highlights artists and their work, but also the critics, curators and scholars who support them. “I enjoy interviewing the glitzy artists, but also the people who have been doing the work behind the scenes,” says Hessel.

In The Story of Art Without Men, she also gives space to many voices, spanning 1500–2015 and 350 artists. “It’s about the unexpected,” she says, “the juxtapositions between schools that were happening simultaneously but don’t get the airtime they deserve.” One of her favourite chapters covers the post-war period, in which she touches on women such as Pop artist Pauline Boty, who died of cancer aged 28 in 1966. “Her life feels so contemporary, it feels like mine. The relevance of these artists now is just incredible.”

Works by female surrealists (from left) Ithell Colquhoun, Remedios Varo, Edith Rimmington, Dorothea Tanning and Leonora Carrington in The Milk of Dreams, the 59th International Art Exhibition in Venice this year.

Photo: Marco Cappelletti, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia

Now, when being categorised by their gender is something many female artists push back against, does Hessel think it is still a helpful strategy? “That’s an interesting one,” she says. “I am all-inclusionary – ‘without men’ can encompass so many other genders, but it should draw you to something.” She points out blockbuster survey shows in recent years, from Minimalist Agnes Martin at Tate Modern in 2015, to Lee Krasner, the Abstract Expressionist, at the Barbican in 2019, to the Venice Biennale this year, in the main venues of which women artists outnumber men by nine to one. These prove, Hessel says, that women have always contributed to cultural shifts and key movements.

She also mentions the exhibition Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child, staged this spring at the Hayward Gallery and the first to focus exclusively on the artist’s use of fabric and textiles. “It’s also about appreciating the work she did in the last 20 years of her life – and you never used to get that with women, ever. That’s where we’re going now. The conversation is really happening.” •

The Story of Art Without Men is published 8 September (Penguin). Charlotte Jansen is the author of Photography Now and Girl on Girl: Art and Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze