In 1971, Linda Nochlin’s groundbreaking essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” posed a provocative question about the role of gender in art history. Today, we know that there have been great women artists across time and cultures—but, too often, their greatness isn’t recognized by the art market.
Art historian Katy Hessel (who’s behind @thegreatwomenartists on Instagram and hosts The Great Women Artists Podcast) visited The Artsy Podcast for a special Women’s History Month episode to discuss the importance of talking about women’s representation in the art world, the progress that has been made towards gender parity, and the contemporary women artists she’s watching now.
Plus, Artsy editors Casey Lesser and Arun Kakar discuss the month’s art news, including the scene at TEFAF, developments in AI artwork, and standout exhibitions in London, Austin, and Hong Kong. Listen now, and read an edited excerpt of the conversation with Hessel below.
This episode was produced by Olivia Horn and Grant Irving, and edited by Grant Irving.
Casey Lesser: Your 2022 book The Story of Art Without Men represents so many women artists, spanning the 16th to 21st centuries. Why was it important to take that comprehensive approach rather than telling the story through, say, 10 artists? And how did you choose who to include?
Katy Hessel: It took the structure of a very famous book called The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich. (I know in America you have H.W. Janson’s History of Art.) I loved my Story of Art copy; it was very well-thumbed and it was kind of my companion as a teenager.
In 2019, the Tate Modern invited me to take over a floor of Tate Modern for one of their Tate Lates. As part of that, I installed a giant, 10-meter-high timeline of women artists from the last thousand years. And I went to my Gombrich—he has this fantastic timeline at the back—to see which women artists he included, so as not to forget any key ones. I suddenly found myself turning the page, and turning the page again, and not finding a single one. The 16th edition of his book includes just one woman, Käthe Kollwitz.
I was kind of shocked that this book that I had loved and read growing up was essentially the story of art without women. And so, just like he left out women, I thought I’d leave out men.
C.L.: Right, and that brings us to a kind of meaty question: Why is it still important to talk about art and artists in terms of gender?
K.H.: It’s such a complicated question because, really, we shouldn’t have to be having this discussion. I shouldn’t have had to have written this book. At the same time, I also stand on the shoulders of so many people who have come before me, who have written the most incredible books about women artists, who have fought so tirelessly for them. But the facts don’t lie.
If we think about museum collections, where I live in London, just 1 % of the National Gallery’s collection is made up of work by women artists. The Royal Academy of Arts in London has been open since 1768, yet they’ve only had one solo exhibition by a woman artist in their main galleries.
And if we think about the auction records and the market, Artsy has done the most phenomenal reports and I remember this fantastic art market report in 2023, where you found that women artists’ works accounted for just 9% of the auction market in 2022. And I think about the Burns Halperin Report, this incredible initiative, which also in 2022 found that 11% of acquisitions and 14.9 % of exhibitions at 31 U.S. museums between 2008 and 2020 were of female-identifying artists, and only 2.2% were of work by Black American artists. So the statistics don’t lie.
There’s still so much work that needs to be done. But I think what’s exciting now is that the conversation is so prevalent.
About our guest
Katy Hessel is an art historian, curator, broadcaster, and author of The Story of Art without Men, a Sunday Times and New York Times Best Seller. Her forthcoming book How to Live an Artful Life is out in November.
About The Artsy Podcast
As editors at the world’s largest online art marketplace, we discover and decode art every day. Now, we’re inviting you to join our conversation. Alongside the leading voices in fashion, music, design, and beyond, we’re untangling the art world and its role in our cultural landscape—one episode at a time.
Header: Portrait of Katy Hessel by Lily Bertrand Webb
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