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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

TODAY on the GWA Podcast: a very special bonus episode with Lubaina Himid, on her British Council Commission for the British Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2026, "Presenting History: Testing Translation".

Returning to the podcast for the second time, Lubaina Himid is an acclaimed Lancashire-based artist working in paintings, sculpture, installations, archives, and more, whose career spans from the 1980s – when she was established as one of the leaders and trailblazers of Britain's Black Arts movement – to the 2020s, where she uses her art and her training in theatre to create all-encompassing works that tackle silenced histories. While you can go to episode 33 to hear a deep dive into Himid's life and work, today we are focusing on her pavilion for Great Britain at the 61st Venice Biennale!

An event that happens every two years, thought of as the most important space to showcase art and artists, the Venice Biennale revolves around a central exhibition, this year curated by the late Koyo Kouoh, titled "In Minor Keys", and is often a signifier to define not just what is happening in the world, but how we can understand it through art. The rest of the Biennale is made up of pavilions – think of it like the Olympics of art, whereby countries have exhibition spaces, nominating an artist to stage a show to compete for the gold medal equivalent, The Golden Lion. 

For the British Pavilion this year Himid will showcase large multi-panel paintings drenched in her signature vibrant palette. In conversation with the British Pavilion's neoclassical architecture, the installation will present Britain as welcoming and airy, brimming with potential, albeit with an underlying sense of unease as the texts, images, and soundscape (made in collaboration with artist Magda Stawarska) subtly introduce tension. And I can't wait to find out more. 

Lubaina Himid's British Council Commission for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale will run from the 9th of May to the 22nd of November, 2026, and is curated by Ese Onojeruo.

Venice Biennale special: Lubaina Himid

TODAY on the GWA Podcast: esteemed art historian Briony Fer on the avant-garde icon, Sophie Taeuber-Arp.

The Professor of History of Art at University College London and a Fellow of the British Academy, Briony Fer is one of the leading art historians in the world. Writing and publishing extensively on modern and contemporary art, specialising in the history of abstraction in the 20th century, Fer has curated monumental exhibitions on artists such as Anni Albers at the Tate Modern, Louise Bourgeois at the National Museum, Oslo, Eva Hesse at the Fruitmarket, Mel Bochner at Whitechapel, and more

But the reason we are speaking with Fer today is because she has also just curated an exhibition “Sophie Taeuber-Arp: The Rule of Curves” at Hauser & Wirth Paris, and published a stunning book on the great artist, dancer, performer, puppet maker, bag weaver, teacher, stained-glass maker, sculptor, architect, and so much more, Sophie Taeuber-Arp…

Born in Switzerland in 1889, Taeuber-Arp is famously associated with the Dada movement, a group of artists who formed post-devastation of World War I to make sense of a nonsensical world. Performing dance routines set to Hugo Ball poetry and turning to her geometric abstractions, full of explosions of colour, that can look equally mechanical as they are made with a human hand – as Fer writes, "diagrammatic and decorative” – Taebuer-Arp was at the forefront of modernism, conjuring new ways of working with form and colour, and exploring – and twisting – the grid, the icon of modern art, for the modern world - and I can’t wait to find out more. 

The book: https://shop.hauserwirth.com/products/sophie-taeuber-arp-la-regle-des-courbes-the-rule-of-curves

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: www.famm.com/en/ www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037
Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Briony Fer on Sophie Taeuber-Arp

TODAY on The Great Women Artists podcast is the esteemed writer, Deborah Levy on avant-garde pioneer Gertrude Stein. 

The author of several novels, including August Blue, Hot Milk and Swimming Home, alongside the critically acclaimed Living Autobiography trilogy (some of my favourite books of all time): Things I Don't Want to Know, The Cost of Living and Real Estate, Deborah Levy is one of the most recognisable and influential writers working today. She has been shortlisted twice each for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Booker Prize, is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has written for the Royal Shakespeare Company. 

But the reason why we are speaking with Levy today is because she has just published a new novel, My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein, which follows a narrator who has travelled to Paris to find out more about Stein, the enigmatic, trailblazing writer and patron; a woman who bolted through the 19th to the 20th century and paved the way for modernism as we know it today, with her daring, experimental writing, from Tender Buttons to The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and her patronage of artists such as Picasso, Cezanne, and Matisse – and I can’t wait to find out more.

My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein https://www.waterstones.com/book/my-year-in-paris-with-gertrude-stein/deborah-levy/2928377373535 

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: www.famm.com/en/ www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037
Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael 
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Deborah Levy on Gertrude Stein

TODAY on the GWA Podcast, is art historian, Alyce Mahon discussing the great Surrealist, Dorothea Tanning. 

Born in Illinois in 1910, where she said “nothing happened but the wallpaper”, Tanning immersed herself in gothic literature to escape to other worlds. Travelling to Paris to hunt down the Surrealists, Tanning “entered” or “birthed” herself into art in 1942 with her self-portrait “Birthday”, which sees her bare-breasted and standing in front of slightly ajar doors that seemingly lead to nowhere. 

Settling in NYC, where she exhibited with Peggy Guggenheim, it was then to the wide-open landscape of Sedona Arizona, where she painted Caspar David Friedrich-like paintings of herself standing before nature – ”asserting the centrality of woman” (as Mahon wrote in her new book). She then returned to postwar France and, switching up her style, moved into a cloud-like and splintered abstractions, before turning to bodily-like soft-sculptures. Although she famously said, "don’t ask me to explain my paintings". 

Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and a Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, Mahon is one of the leading scholars on Surrealism in the world today. The author of numerous books including Surrealism and the Politics of Eros, 1938-1968 (2005), Eroticism & Art (2005), The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde (2020), Mahon has also curated or advised on exhibitions on the likes of Leonor Fini, the great Argentine-born artist known for her meticulously rendered, proto-punk renaissance-like works, who she discussed with us on episode 48, as well as the Indian-born, once Cornish-based Ithell Colquhoun. 

Mahon was the curator of the monumental exhibition at Tate Modern in 2018, and now – has just published a brilliant, extensive book: Dorothea Tanning, a Surrealist world – our with Yale UP this month – that charts her life story across the places she lived in America and France and the place she imagined in her art, bringing alive her works, steeping them in history, and introducing us to Tanning’s surreal world – and I can’t wait to find out more. 

Alyce's book: https://yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300244601/dorothea-tanning/

Get 20% off Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World by Alyce Mahon when you purchase via the Yale University Press London website www.yalebooks.co.uk (RRP £30, offer price: £24)

Enter code ALYCE when prompted in the checkout.

UK orders only. Includes FREE UK P&P. Offer expires on 8 June 2026.

This is an exclusive offer that will only be honoured on yalebooks.co.uk (and not through other retailers) and cannot be used in conjunction with other promotions.

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: www.famm.com/en/ www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037
Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel 
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Alyce Mahon on Dorothea Tanning

TODAY on the GWA podcast: curator SONNET STANFILL on ELSA SCHIAPARELLI!

Sonnet is the Senior Curator of Fashion at the V&A, where she has worked since 1999. Stanfill has curated numerous highly acclaimed exhibitions, such as New York Fashion Now, Ballgowns: British Glamour since 1950, and the landmark The Glamour of Italian Fashion (2014), which traveled to several museums across the US. She has published and lectured widely on various aspects of fashion design and holds an MA in the history of dress. But the reason why we are speaking with her today is because she has just curated the monumental exhibition, Elsa Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art at the V&A, which charts the fearless life and daring work of the artist, designer, surrealist, influencer and general pioneer of who the modern woman was and what she could be. A creator of surrealist wonderlands with her fantastical gowns with floating eyes, lips, and lobsters, woven jackets embellished with astrological symbolism and mirrors inspired by Versailles, plus carrot-shaped buttons with embroidered cauliflowers, Schiaparelli – who also made jewellery and perfumes and wrote extensively – was one of the most inventive people of the 20th century. Born in Rome in 1890, she fled her conservative life for London, New York, and later Paris, where she befriended the surrealists and built a business on a scale hardly any woman had done before. 

 Elsa Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art, V&A South Kensington https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/schiaparelli?srsltid=AfmBOormAlPprtKeObeDZhw4NDLACOBGb9Z-ApA9ZHIsKAio0A3mDHAZ

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: www.famm.com/en/ www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037
Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael. Music by Ben Wetherfield

Sonnet Stanfill on Elsa Schiaparelli

TODAY on the GWA Podcast: the esteemed scholar, author, and art historian DIANE APOSTOLOS-CAPPADONA on MARY MAGDALENE!

Professor Emerita of Religious Art & Cultural History and Haub Director of the Catholic Studies Program at Georgetown University, and Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Art History Program at The George Washington University, Apostolos-Cappadona has written extensively on art history. The author of Mary Magdalene: A Visual History (2023); A Guide to Christian Art (2020); Encyclopedia of Women in Religious Art (1996); Dictionary of Christian Art (1994); and The Spirit and the Vision: The Influence of Christian Romanticism on the Development of 19th-Century American Art (1995), and “In Search of Mary Magdalene: images and traditions” (2002)... Apostolos-Cappadona is one of the leading scholars in the world on religious art and, in particular, the image of Mary Magdalene. 

So - today - unlike in episodes where we deep-dive into a single artist, we will be taking an approach like we've previously done with Marina Warner on Eve, or Natalie Haynes on Medusa, and deep-diving into one of the most popular yet enigmatic figures in art: Mary Magdalene, who has been documented by artists in paint, sculpture, and more, for the past 16 centuries – and counting… and who seems to be portrayed differently every time. After all, Apostolos-Cappadona has referred to her as the most flexible figure in art. 

Look at images of her and you’ll see a reader, preacher, follower and witness; crying at the foot of the Cross, washing Christ’s feet or looking up to the heavens – repenting her sins with pearl-like tears – and too often conveniently exposing her chest. Sometimes identified by her jar of ointment or red robe (a contrast to the sanctified Virgin Mary’s blue), she is most popularly known, today, as Christ’s lover or a prostitute, despite no passage in the Bible describing her as such. Yet, the truth is we don’t know who she was, and it seems artists have adopted her in ways that coincide with their needs, and the needs of the time. 

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 Tory Peters and Nada Smiljanic. Music by Ben Wetherfield

Diane Apostolos-Cappadona on Mary Magdalene

TODAY on the GWA Podcast: choreographer Meryl Tankard on her mentor and friend, the legendary dancer and choreographer: PINA BAUSCH (1940-2009).

Artist, choreographer, visionary, and trailblazer in bringing dance into the modern world, Pina Bausch – one of the most popular names when it comes to artists' influences – was hailed for her raw, haunting, experimental dances, and all-encompassing productions.

Born in 1940 in Germany in the midst of WW2, from an early age Pina took ballet and dance lessons. In the 1950s, a scholarship at Juilliard took her to NYC, a time of great artistic reinvention, and then back to Germany, where she founded Tanztheater Wuppertal and created her groundbreaking choreographies. While the group, at first, faced hostility, the crowd – and the world – soon realized her innovations. 

On the magic of dancing with Pina Bausch, Meryl told me: "Every time we moved it had an emotion behind it ... that's what really shocked everyone at the beginning, because dance had always hidden the pain, hidden the insecurities; we had beautiful hair and costumes. And Pina went, 'let's forget all that. Let's talk about what you are really feeling'. She choreographed vulnerability. She choreographed all our insecurities, and she put music to it. People were just like, wow, that's me. They could see themselves."

I meet with Meryl Tankard on the occasion of her creating a new encounter with Bausch's piece "Kontakthof", with “Kontakthof – Echoes of ‘78”, to be performed at Sadler’s Wells here in London (7–11 April). With nine of the original dancers returning to their roles, the production will integrate projections of archival footage from the original performance, reflecting the passage of time since its creation. And I can't wait to find out more!

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

"Kontakthof – Echoes of '78" https://www.sadlerswells.com/on-tour/current-productions/kontakthof-echoes-of-78/

Meryl Tankard on Pina Bausch

I am so excited to say that my guests on the GWA Podcast are the esteemed scholar and curator, Katlijne Van der Stighelen, and Royal Acdemy senior curator, Julien Domercq!

Part 1 – Katlijne Van der Stighelen
Part 2 – Julien Domercq

A professor at KU Leuven until 2024, who has published books on artist Anna Maria van Schurma, Katlijne is also a curator, having, in 1999, along with Mirjam Westen, curated the first ever exhibition on women artists in Belgium and the Netherlands. She is also the curator of Van Dyck l'Europeo: His Journey from Antwerp to Genoa and London', currently on view at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa. 

But, the reason why we are speaking with Katlijne today is because she has, according to some news outlets, made the greatest artistic discovery of the 21st century - and no, we are not talking about Banksy. It was digging around in a museum basement just over 30 years ago that Katlijne stumbled upon the extraordinary work of Michaelina Wautier, then a totally obscure name not even known to 17th century specialists, active in the mid-1600s and at famed for her colossal paintings of mythological scenes, smaller meticulously rendered, almost breathable garlands of dazzling flowers, and portraits of strong female saints and characters, not unlike her Roman contemporary, Artemisia Gentileschi. 

But clearly something got lost upon the way – because until Katlijne’s work, Wautier’s name had been merely a footnote in art history. But now, thanks to decades of her tireless work, she is righting that wrong with Wautier’s first ever exhibition in the UK - following critically acclaimed shows at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, MFA Boston, MAS-Museum in Antwerp, and more. 

Part one of this podcast will deep dive into this extraordinary artist – and story – and in the second half, we will walk around the exhibition with Royal Academy senior curator Julien Dormecq to transport you to London, and I can’t wait to find out more. 

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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 Tory Peters
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Michaelina Wautier told by Katlijne Van der Stighelen (part 1) and Julien Domercq (part 2)

TODAY on the GWA PODCAST: esteemed curator DITA AMORY, discussing HELENE SCHJERFBECK!

Currently the Robert Lehman Curator in Charge of the Robert Lehman Collection at The Met, Amory has curated numerous critically-acclaimed exhibitions, such as Pierre Bonnard: the Late Interiors, Madame Cézanne, Félix Vallotton, Vertigo of Color, and more. A graduate of art history at Trinity College, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where she earned a master’s degree – Amory began her career as a librarian, before becoming Curator of Drawings, then Chief Curator at the National Academy of Design. She joined the Met in 1997 as Assistant Curator of the Robert Lehman Collection, taking charge of the department in 2007 as Acting Associate Curator in Charge, and later Curator in Charge.

And WOW has she worked on the most incredible projects since…. including the reason why we are speaking to her today: the extraordinary, current exhibition: Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck, that brings together 60 works by the Finnish-born artist, who travelled to Paris to study in the late 1800s, as one of few women who could be awarded an education on a par with their male counterparts. Leading an artistic life imbued with freedom, Schjerfbeck spent summers in Brittany – where she painted en plein air – producing radical paintings devoid of figures but full of modernist feeling. It was also here where she embarked on a life-long subject, her self-portrait, that she would tackle in Helsinki and beyond… She was an artist whose life moved with changes in the 20th century, and worked in a style that not only charted the changes in a war-filled world, but a woman battling with her own ageing. 

Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck is the first exhibition to showcase the work of the artist in a major US museum. On now, until April 5. https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/seeing-silence-the-paintings-of-helene-schjerfbeck

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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 Tory Peters and Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Dita Amory on Helene Schjerfbeck

TODAY on the GWA Podcast: the renowned art historian and writer, Nicholas Fox Weber discussing ANNI ALBERS!

A graduate of Columbia College and Yale University, who received his PhD at the University of Groningen, Weber is a prolific and esteemed author of over a dozen books – including The Bauhaus Group, Le Cor­busier, Balthus A Biography, Patron Saints, The Art of Babar, and many more – as well as being the founder of a non-profit organisation that supports arts, education and medical care in Senegal…

But! The reason why we are speaking to him today is because, for nearly 50 years, he has devoted himself to the lives and works of the pioneering 20th century German-born artists – who lived in the US for much of their adult life – Josef and Anni Albers. As the Executive Director of their foundation, Weber has written extensively on them, bringing their work to the fore, and championing and preserving their legacy. 

While Josef Albers is a trailblazing artist whose theories on colour, and teaching methods, have shaped much of contemporary art, it is the brilliant Anni Albers who we will be discussing today. Born in 1899, and a student of the Bauhaus and a teacher at Black Mountain College, Albers is known for spellbinding weavings that span large-scale practical wall-coverings to smaller thread-based works that she infused with geometric, rhythmic patterning and electric colouring. The first artist working in textile to be honoured with a major solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and a celebrated writer known for her books – On Designing / On Weaving – Albers, it is fair to say brought the medium into the modernist world, while also deeply rooting it in ancient textile traditions from around the world. 

I am delighted to be speaking to Weber ahead of the publication of his extraordinary new book, Anni Albers: A Life, out this April, that charts the life of this artist who he was lucky enough to call a close friend, and who we are lucky to now witness in a new way thanks to the extensive personal stories he has gathered from the many times they would meet, whereby he would rush to write down everything she said verbatim, so we could one day have this extraordinary record.

HIS BOOK: https://www.waterstones.com/book/anni-albers/nicholas-fox-weber//9780300269376?sv1=affiliate&sv_campaign_id=626889&awc=3787_1773140986_d2d13306eaf5d21d4b7bc0e74ed2dd43&utm_source=626889&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=adstrong

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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

Briony Fer on Sophie Taeuber-Arp

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

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