Art/Lit Salon: Where We Are Now (in the Story of Art Without Men) (In person)
Join us for chat, discussion, drinks and thought-provocation at Art/Lit, The London Library’s salon event, which explores all things art, all things literature and where the two forms collide.
As the paperback of Katy Hessel’s groundbreaking book, The Story of Art Without Men, comes out, and two years after it originally hit the shelves, we consider where we’re at now in terms of the prominence and status of women’s and non-binary people’s art in our culture today. How much progress has been made? How intersectional is that progress? And is the dial – and the artworld - finally shifting?
In conversation with Katy, are three curators and art writers working at the very coalface. Dr Dorothy Price is a curator and art historian, whose recent RA exhibitions, Making Modernism and Entangled Pasts, respectively gave a platform to the work of previously neglected women artists and considered art through the prism of colonialism. Chris Bayley is a curator and writer, whose most recent exhibition at the Serpentine is Judy Chicago: Revelations, which brings together work by the legendary feminist artist who has long challenged the artistic canon, in particular in her iconic installation The Dinner Party. And Hettie Judah is a curator and art writer. Between 2019 and 2024, her work explored the intersection of art and motherhood, most recently in her Hayward Gallery exhibition currently touring the UK and in her new book, both of which are called Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood.
Chris Bayley is a curator and writer based in London. He is currently Curator, Exhibitions, at Serpentine where he has worked on exhibitions and accompanying publications including Judy Chicago: Revelations (2024); Tomás Saraceno: Web(s) of Life (2023); and Barbara Chase-Riboud: Infinite Folds (2022). Previously he was Assistant Curator at Barbican, where he worked on Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics (2022); Shilpa Gupta: Sun at Night (2021); Claudia Andujar: The Yanomami Struggle (2021); Masculinities: Liberation through Photography (2020); Yto Barrada: Agadir; and Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-Garde (both 2018).
Hettie Judah is a writer and curator. She is a regular contributor to The Guardian, Frieze and The Times Literary Supplement, and writes a monthly column for Apollo magazine. She is curator of the Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood which is currently touring the UK and her standalone book Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood was published in July this year. As a broadcaster she can be heard (and sometimes seen) on programmes including BBC Radio 4’s Front Row. Recent books include How Not To Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents) and Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones.
Dr Dorothy Price is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Critical Race Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art, a Fellow of the British Academy, an art writer and a curator. Her exhibitions have included Personal Feeling is the Main Thing with Chantal Joffe at The Lowry, Salford in 2018, For Esme with Love and Squalor also with Chantal Joffe at Arnolfini, Bristol in 2020, Making Modernism at The Royal Academy of Arts in 2023, Claudette Johnson: Presence at The Courtauld Gallery in 2023 and the Royal Academy's main galleries exhibition in Spring 2024, Entangled Pasts 1768-now: Art, colonialism and change. Her forthcoming books are The Courage to Look and For Opacity: A Visual Poetics of Black British Art.
Katy Hessel is an art historian, broadcaster and curator dedicated to celebrating women artists from all over the world, through projects including the Great Women Artists Instagram and podcast. Her bestselling book, The Story of Art Without Men, was the 2022 Waterstone’s Book of the Year.
Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men and Hettie Judah's Acts of Creation will be available to buy at the event and online from our partner bookshop Hatchards.
NB Doors (and the bar and chat) open at 6.45pm, the talk will run from 7.15-8.15pm and the bar will close at 8.45pm.
This event will take place in person at The London Library. Please see our Event Access Guidelines before you arrive.
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