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Katy Hessel

Created off the back of @thegreatwomenartists Instagram, this podcast is all about celebrating women artists. Presented by art historian and curator, Katy Hessel, this podcast interviews artists on their career, or curators, writers, or general art lovers, on the female artist who means the most to them.

The Great Women Artists

Dear listeners, 

As we enter a new month of December, I wanted to share a teaser of the audiobook of my new book, How to Live an Artful Life. 

https://www.waterstones.com/book/how-to-live-an-artful-life/katy-hessel/9781529155204

Here is an extract from the month of December, featuring its introduction and the first five days. 

Each month is based around a theme. For example, January is about seeking out ideas, February is about love, and September focuses on time. December's is joy and features thoughts, reflections, creative exercises and daily routines from the likes of Laurie Anderson, Louise Bourgeois, Yoko Ono, Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold, and more.

A time of celebration, light and beauty; a time to spend with family and take part in festivities; to relish in the delights that the gift of art can give, and to take stock in everything you’ve discovered, learnt, tried and tasted this year. 

As we embark on this month, before we start again in January, think of December – like art – as a gift that has been given to you, full of work yet to be written, painted, sculpted and more; people whom you have yet to meet, talk to or fall in love with.

How to Live an Artful Life: December

I am so excited to bring you this conversation with the extraordinary Es Devlin, who joined me at Liberty last week to celebrate the release of How to Live an Artful Life. 

Es Devlin is an artist and stage designer renowned all over the world for her large-scale performative sculptures and environments – from theatre and opera design for the National Gallery and Royal Opera House, to kinetic stage sculptures for musicians like Beyoncé, U2 and Lady Gaga. She has also created luminous installations at the V&A, Serpentine Galleries, Somerset House, and more. Whether designing for Beyoncé, the opera, or creating public artworks, Es Devlin’s works dissolve the boundaries between art, architecture and performance, and encourage us to rethink our position in the world. 

Expertly led by the wonderful Hannah Macinnes, we touched on all things to do with living an artful life – Es’s morning routine; how we can get better at focusing our attention on one thing; artmaking as an expression of love; the artist hustle – and so much more. I can’t wait for you to hear it.

Pick up your copy of How to Live an Artful Life: https://www.waterstones.com/book/how-to-live-an-artful-life/katy-hessel/9781529155204

An Atlas of Es Devlin https://www.waterstones.com/book/an-atlas-of-es-devlin/es-devlin/andrea-lipps/9780500023181

Bonus: Katy Hessel & Es Devlin

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the esteemed curator, author, and expert in photography, Madga Keany. 

Currently the Head Curator of International Art at the National Gallery of Art, Canberra, Magda was most recently Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, and before that, Senior Curator, Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery London, where she lead the realisation of a major re-presentation of the Photographs Collection as part of the museum’s rehaul. 

Keany has curated shows and published texts on Australian art, design and social history, photography that ranges from the Victorian period to fashion, conflict and portraiture, solo presentations of portraits by Irving Penn, among many others. She has written for the groundbreaking Know My Name project, that put women artists in Australia on a global stage as well as for Cindy Sherman, A World History of Women Photographers, and more. 

…but it was her exhibition last year that really grabbed my attention: Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream in', that brought together the two photographers working 100 years apart, from very different worlds, circumstances and contexts, but which showed how these pioneering women shaped the medium, with their dreamlike pictures imbued with beauty, symbolism, classicism, transformation and more… 

So today, I couldn’t be more excited to delve into the life of the 19th century photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron, who, aged 49 in 1863, picked up a camera and, largely self-taught, crafted her distinct bohemian style pictures with that hazy sepia glow, that proved to not only be influential in Victorian Britain, but have a huge impact on photography at large. As Cameron once said:

“My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real & Ideal & sacrificing nothing of Truth by all possible devotion to poetry and beauty.” 

And I can’t wait to find out more.

People mentioned:

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879)
Francesca Woodman (1958–1981)
John Herschel (1792–1871)

Artworks: 

Julia Margaret Cameron, Annie, 1864; https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O81145/annie-photograph-cameron-julia-margaret/ 

Julia Margaret Cameron, Pomona, 1872; https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1433678/pomona-photograph-cameron-julia-margaret/ 

Julia Margaret Cameron, Thomas Carlyle, 1867; https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/269434 

Julia Margaret Cameron, The Astronomer, 1867; https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1433637/the-astronomer-photograph-cameron-julia-margaret/ 

Julia Margaret Cameron, Ellen Terry, at the age of sixteen, 1864 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/269433 

--

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Magda Keaney on Julia Margaret Cameron

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast today is the esteemed curator, Megan Fontanella. 

A specialist in Modern Art and Provenance at the Guggenheim New York, Fontanella’s research interests focus on late 19th and early 20th European art and the avant-garde in the USA. She has organised a plethora of exhibitions for the Guggenheim across the globe, from Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim (2017); Kandinsky (2020–21); Kandinsky: Around the Circle (2021–22; 2023–24); Young Picasso in Paris (2023), as well as travelling collection exhibitions in Australia, Canada, and Europe.

But the reason why we are speaking to Fontanella today is because she is very excitingly curating a monumental exhibition by the German Expressionist, Gabriele Münter. Titled Contours of a World, the show – opening 7 November through to April 2026 – will feature 60 of the artist’s luminous, bold, sometimes rapidly-made paintings – from her portraits of friends to landscapes of the German alpine town of Murnau – that chart the changing face of modernism in art. Focusing on 1908 to 1920, it will deep-dive into her involvement with “The Blue Rider” – a group of visionary artists and writers who explored how colour and form could evoke emotion and spiritualist ideas – to the works she made during the First World War. 

Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World is on view at Guggenheim New York, 7 Nov – 26 Apr 2026:
https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/gabriele-munter

Artists mentioned:
Gabriele Münter (1877–1962)
Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944)
Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938)
Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”) group

Artworks mentioned:
Gabriele Münter - Still Life on the Tram After Shopping (1909–1912)
Gabriele Münter - Portrait of Marianne Werefkin (1909)
Gabriele Münter - Boating (1910)
Gabriele Münter - Meditation (1917) 
Gabriele Münter - Future (Woman in Stockholm) (1917)
Gabriele Münter - Portrait of Anna Roslund (1917)
Gabriele Münter - Lady in an Armchair, Writing (1929)
Gabriele Munter - Breakfast of the Birds (1934)

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Megan Fontanella on Gabriele Münter

I'm so excited to say that today’s guest on the Great Women Artist Podcast is the esteemed curator, writer, broadcaster and cultural trailblazer, Ekow Eshun. 

Born in North-west London in 1968, Eshun has been at the forefront of creative culture for decades.

Writing across subjects and presenting documentaries, Eshun has curated groundbreaking exhibitions. From the 2022 In the Black Fantastic, at the Hayward in London – to The Time Is Always Now, a study of the Black figure and its representation in contemporary art, that began at London’s National Portrait Gallery, and has since travelled across the US. 

The author of multiple books: in 2006, he published his memoir: “Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa” an exploration of identity and race, that sees Eshun travelling through Ghana in search of his roots. 

And in 2024, The Strangers, a stunning work of creative nonfiction that tells the story of five pioneering Black men set against a vivid backdrop of art, culture, and resistance. 

So for this special episode we are going to deep dive into the women writers and artists who have influenced his life and career, including Morrison, the pioneering science fiction writer, Octavia E. Butler, Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu, the Rotterdam based artist Ellen Gallagher, and photographer Liz Johnson Artur. 

Because, as Eshun himself says, “The great thing about working with artists is they don’t walk a straight line or think along linear paths; they think in patterns, allowing us to approach long-established conversations from a novel perspective.” 

Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006)
Hilary Mantel (1952–2022)
Wangechi Mutu (b.1972)
Ellen Gallagher (b.1965)
Liz Johnson Artur (1964)
Toni Morrison (1931–2019)

Exhibitions mentioned:
In the Black Fantastic, 2022, Hayward Gallery, London: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/venues/hayward-gallery/past-exhibitions/in-the-black-fantastic/ 

The Time Is Always Now, 2024-present, touring: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/the-time-is-always-now

The Clearing, space Un gallery, Tokyo, November 2025; https://www.artweektokyo.com/en/institution-gallery/space-un/ 

Books mentioned:
Octavia Butler - Parable of the Sower (1993) https://www.waterstones.com/book/parable-of-the-sower/octavia-e-butler/9781472263667 

Octavia Butler - XenoGenesis trilogy; Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989) https://www.octaviabutler.com/xenogenesis-series 

Hilary Mantel - The Wolf Hall trilogy; Wolf Hall (2009), Bring Up the Bodies (2012), and The Mirror & the Light (2020) https://www.waterstones.com/book/wolf-hall/hilary-mantel/9780008381691 

Ekow Eshun - Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa (2006): https://www.waterstones.com/book/9780141010960?sv1=affiliate&sv_campaign_id=117976&awc=3787_1761656125_d069bd054bf50de1a9bfc45991a52d17&utm_source=117976&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=Penguin+Books 

Ekow Eshun - The Strangers (2024): https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-strangers/ekow-eshun/9780241990698 
Herman Melville - Moby Dick (1851) https://www.waterstones.com/book/moby-dick/herman-melville/andrew-delbanco/9780142437247 
Toni Morrison - Beloved (1987) https://www.waterstones.com/book/beloved/toni-morrison/9780099760115 

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Ekow Eshun on Toni Morrison, Octavia E. Butler, Hilary Mantel, Wangechi Mutu, and more

I'm so excited to say that my guest on the Great Women Artist Podcast is one of the world's most renowned photographers working today, Sally Mann. 

Hailed for her images of nature in the remote American south – full of deeply layered memories and rivers that become characters of their own – and intimate portrayals of her children Jesse, Emmett and Virginia, Sally Mann creates photographs full of beauty. Beauty being something that is tied up with ephemerality, that is alive, that is in motion, something that we have to catch. 

As she aptly wrote in her 2015 memoir, Hold Still, “there cannot be any real beauty without the indolic whiff of decay.” Mann's photographs are therefore both painterly and fleeting. They capture people on the cusp of something else, whether that be illness or an increasingly decaying body, but she also captures the land, connecting us to the ancient and the natural worlds. 

Using an eight by 10 bellows camera and 19th century photographic techniques, her black and white aesthetic - that can be both dreamlike and hazy - chimes with her interest in memory and decay. Born in 1951 in Lexington, Virginia, Mann began her artistic career as a poet, but a deep dive in photography in the late 1960s whilst attending the Ansel Adams Gallery Yosemite Workshops was one of the catalysts for her photographic career. Words have always also taken center stage - she studied literature at Hollins College in Virginia in 1974 and completed an MA in creative writing the following year. She is the author of Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs and was the subject of two documentaries, Blood Ties in 1994, and What Remains in 2006.

However, this year she also released the New York Times bestselling book, Art Work: The Creative Life, a part memoir, part insight into her creative life, which is a strange and lonely one; one that is so personal and insular, and one that we can often take for granted and get angry at. Yet it was reading this that really reminded me about why so many of us do what we do… 

Books mentioned:
Sally Mann - Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs: https://www.waterstones.com/book/hold-still/sally-mann/9780241699287
Sally Mann - Art Work: The Creative Life: https://www.waterstones.com/book/art-work/sally-mann/9780241774540

Artists mentioned:
Ansel Adams (1902–1984)
Edward Weston (1886–1958)
Cy Twombly (1928–2011)
Bill Brandt (1904–1983)
Robert Capa (1913–1954)
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879)
Mary Ellen Mark (1940–2015)
Joseph Szabo (b.1944) 
Lady Clementina Hawarden (1822–1865)
Imogen Cunningham (1883–1976)

Artworks mentioned:
Sally Mann, The Perfect Tomato (1990): https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/10396
Sally Mann, Immediate Family series (1984–1992)
Sally Mann, Dead Duck (1988): https://observer.co.uk/culture/photography/article/sally-mann-my-quest-to-take-the-perfect-photograph-memoir
Sally Mann, Marital Trust series (1990s to the early 2000s, to be exhibited at Gagosian in 2027)
The Family of Man, a 1955 exhibition at MoMA, organised by Edward Steichen: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2429

--

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Sally Mann

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most exciting young painters working today, Eva Helene Pade. 

Born in Denmark in 1997, and based in Paris – where we are recording today – Pade is known for her rich and emotionally-charged, large-scale canvases populated with figures that morph in and out of abstraction. Often set in a dreamworld that can feel akin to being lost in a dance or state of unconsciousness, with fiery blazes and dark intense shadows, Pade’s paintings exist in places beyond the realm of our world. They are full of ambiguity: as a viewer, you are unaware of whether they are in day or night, heaven or hell, if the figures are male or female, or set in an ancient world or contemporary life. 

Stylistically, Pade seems to borrow from a lineage of Northern European figurative artists, from Edvard Munch to Otto Dix, creating work akin surrealism or expressionism: artistic movements born out of a time of political tumult, yet exude freedom and liberation in their subject and handling of paint. This creates an interesting conversation about the state of the world vs then, and now. 

But she also goes further, imbuing her work with ancient stories and figures – such as Eve or maybe Ophelia – and stories, such as Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, a ballet she was inspired by after seeing a performance choreographed by Pina Bausch, the influential German dancer. And like Bausch, Pade was drawn to rework the story from a female lens, which served as the foundation for her first ever museum show at Arken Denmark, opening just a year after she graduated from The Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen… 

Today, we meet Pade in her Paris studio on a very hot day ahead of a new exhibition of paintings that opens at Thaddeaus Ropac in London in October, and I can’t wait to find out more… 

Exhibition: https://ropac.net/exhibitions/764-eva-helene-pade-sgelys/

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Eva Helene Pade

I am so excited to say that my guest, returning for his second interview on the GWA Podcast, is the esteemed American writer, critic, and curator, Hilton Als…

A staff writer at The New Yorker for over 30 years, and a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2017 and a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing, Als is the author of numerous books. He is a teaching professor at Berkeley, 

Last time Als came on the podcast, we discussed two significant artists for him, the photographer, Diane Arbus; and the painter of people, Alice Neel – the latter of whom he has curated exhibitions of, exploring her life in uptown Manhattan, and her various friendships with artists, writers, dancers, neighbours and social activists. 119

But today I meet Hilton on the occasion of a new exhibition he has curated: Postures: Jean Rhys in the Modern World at Michael Werner Gallery in London, which explores the extraordinary and complex life of Creole-British writer, Jean Rhys, born in Dominica in 1890 to plantation owners, who grew up a white person, or Creole, in a largely Black society, and moved to Britain aged 16 and lived most of her life in Europe until her death in 1979.

She was known for telling stories of women in exile, often at the whim of powerful men, and celebrated for her last and best-selling novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, published 1966, that told the life story of the so-called mad woman in the attic, Antoinette Cosway, from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, from Cosway’s perspective. 

And what a beautiful, complex, show this is. Featuring Hurvin Anderson, Celia Paul, Gwen John, Sarah Lucas, Kara Walker, and more, it is a rich portrait of a complex figure who lived between worlds, cultures, reality and fiction. And I can’t wait to find out more. 

Postures: Jean Rhys in the Modern World is at Michael Werner Gallery, London, until 22 November. For more on the show: https://www.michaelwerner.com/exhibitions/postures-jean-rhys-in-the-modern-world. 

Books/poems mentioned:

Good Morning, Midnight - Jean Rhys
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
Smile Please - Jean Rhys
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
Self-Portrait - Celia Paul 
Jean Rhys (poem) - Derek Walcott 
Autobiography of My Mother - Jamaica Kincaid
A View of The Empire at Sunset - Caryl Phillips

Artists/writers mentioned:
Hurvin Anderson
Kara Walker
Eugène Atget
Eugène Leroy 
Cynthia Lahti 
Francis Picabia
Celia Paul
Gwen John
Augustus John
Sarah Lucas
Hans Bellmer
Caryl Phillips
Jamaica Kincaid
Derek Walcott 

--

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Hilton Als on Jean Rhys

It’s officially one month to go until the publication of How to Live an Artful Life, my new book that features a quote by an artist or writer for everyday of the year: https://www.waterstones.com/book/how-to-live-an-artful-life/katy-hessel/9781529155204

To celebrate, I wanted to share a teaser of the audiobook with an extract from the month of October, featuring its introduction and the first six days, so you can get a feel for the book. 

Each month is based around a theme. For example, January is about seeking out ideas, February is about love, and September focuses on time. 

October’s is transformation and features thoughts, reflections, creative exercises and daily routines from the likes of Virginia Woolf, Barbara Hepworth, Rose Wylie, Joan Mitchell, Marina Abramović, Zanele Muholi, Cindy Sherman, to name a few…

How to Live an Artful Life (Audiobook Taster!)

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA podcast is one of the most influential artists working in the world right now, TANIA BRUGUERA!

Hailed for her installation and participatory performance works that blur the boundaries between art and reality, Bruguera has dedicated her life to making work that explores freedom of expression, immigration, totalitarianism, and human rights. 

She has brought attention to the strict control of Cuban authorities by confronting visitors at Tate Modern with performer police officers on horseback, to setting up an open debate on an official-looking stage at the Havana Biennale to give people license to say what they want for one minute… 

Her work – often set in the framework of the theatre – has continued to push art to its limits and grant space for important and difficult conversations to take place. As she has said: 

“In a way, when you talk about politics, there is a lot of theatre involved. And what I’m trying to do with my art is how can we break the classic theatre where everything has already been decided, into a place where people can add something to the discourse”.

Born in Cuba in 1968, Bruguera was raised during the era of Fidel Castro by a diplomat and minister father in the Castro government. She moved three times – to Paris, Lebanon, and Panama – before returning to Havana, where she graduated from the Escuela de Arte San Alejandro, and would go onto complete MFAs in painting and performance in Havana and Chicago. 

Since then, Bruguera has researched both the promise and failings of the Cuban Revolution, in performance pieces that allow her audience to unite and gather together and see and experience what lies behind governmental propaganda. Not only do these works speak universally, transcending time and place, but they are a great comment on the promises and failings of institutions and governments today. 

The founder of the first performance studies programme in Latin America, known as the Behaviour Art School, Bruguera is also Senior Lecturer in Media & Performance, Theater, Dance & Media at Harvard University, where we are recording with her today, and, as an artist I have admired for a very young age, I really can’t wait to find out more.

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My new book, How To Live An Artful Life: https://www.waterstones.com/book/how-to-live-an-artful-life/katy-hessel/9781529155204

---

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

How to Live an Artful Life: December

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

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