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Katy Hessel is an art historian, curator, broadcaster, and author of The Story of Art without Men, that charts the last 500 years of art by women. It is a Sunday Times and New York Times Bestseller, and won Waterstones Book of the Year 2022. She runs @thegreatwomenartists, an Instagram account that has celebrated women artists since 2015.
Hessel writes a fortnightly column for The Guardian, and hosts The Great Women Artists Podcast, where she has interviewed 130+ artists and writers, including Marina Abramović and Tracey Emin. She is the host of Death of an Artist: Krasner and Pollock, a series about the legacy of Lee Krasner, and Dior Talks – Feminist Art, where she has interviewed Judy Chicago, among others.
In 2024, she launched Museums Without Men, an audio series highlighting works by women and gender non-conforming artists in museum collections worldwide, including The Met, Tate Britain, Hirshhorn, Fine Arts Museum San Francisco, Hepworth Wakefield, and more.
Hessel writes and presents arts documentaries for the BBC, such as Artemisia Gentileschi (2020) and Art on the BBC: Monet (2022). She is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge.; a Trustee at Charleston Trust; and has been selected for Forbes 30 Under 30.
Hessel has lectured at The Guggenheim, MFA Boston, Tate, The National Gallery, Courtauld, Cambridge University; presented films for Tate, Royal Academy, Barbican; and is a regularly contributor to BBC Radio 3 and 4.
She has curated exhibitions at Victoria Miro Gallery, Kasmin Gallery, Stephen Friedman Gallery, and once took over a floor of Tate Modern. She also runs the annual The Great Women Artists Residency at Palazzo Monti for emerging artists, 2018–present.
Credit: Lily Bertrand-Webb