Vogue: Have you always loved art?
Katy Hessel: Since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by art. I don’t come from an artistic family, but my parents were always very encouraging of museum visits. I remember the first time I ever took the Tube myself, I went to go see the Chris Ofili exhibition at Tate Britain. Also my elder sister was really into art history, and so I basically just copied her. [Laughs.]
Do you remember the first piece of art you loved?
It was the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern, so more of an art space, really. I remember when I was about six seeing the Louise Bourgeois spider there, and thinking, like, What is this? And I realized it was up to me to decide what I thought. No one was like, Oh, this is Louise Bourgeois and she’s French American and this this this… It was more like, Here’s this spider, how does it make me feel?
How did you come to start The Great Women Artists Instagram account, the precursor to your podcast?
It was 2015. I had just finished university, and I went to this art fair and looked around me, and suddenly realized that there were no women artists. First of all, how are there no women artists? And second, how have I never thought about this? Essentially, have I actually been looking at art history from a male perspective? I honestly had to check myself.
I remember taking myself off to the British Library and tracking down Linda Nochlin’s book, the catalog of her exhibition from 1976, “Women Artists: 1550–1950,” and being like, Oh my goodness, women have been artists for centuries.
And the reason why I chose Instagram, I always say: Use all the resources that you have at your disposal. As a 21-year-old, I had Instagram. So I just did it every single day. And it did require quite a lot of research, but then you just get into these rabbit holes of more and more artists. I was just sort of addicted to finding out about all these women’s lives.
Speaking of Linda Nochlin, where’d the name of the Instagram page and the podcast come from?
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