‘So many of us look at the world through our screens and forget to pay attention to the world outside’: Katy Hessel on the world’s great female artists, why free entry to museums matters and her consuming passions

‘I always wanted to do something in art history that hadn't been done before, I guess, but I didn't know what it was going to be,’ says Katy Hessel. The 31-year-old art historian, writer and curator splits her time between London and New York and was named on Forbes’s infamous ‘30 Under 30’ list in the arts and culture category in 2021. She is probably best known for her Sunday Times bestselling-book The Story of Art Without Men, an examination of art made by women from the 15th to the 21st century, for which she won the Waterstones Book of the Year award. Her Instagram account, The Great Woman Artists, has 462K followers and has spawned a podcast on which Katy has interviewed Jenny Saville, Tracey Emin and the Guerilla Girls, to name just a few.

Her new book, How to Live an Artful Life, is ‘an almanac of sorts,’ she says. Each page is dedicated to one day of the year and features a quote from an influential artist or writer (such as Louise Bourgeois, Nan Goldin, Marina Abramović), plus Katy’s thoughts, reflections and creative insights. Today’s quote (November 4) comes courtesy of Virginia Woolf and is paired with notes on how to think about ‘the memory of language’ and a task for the reader — to ‘imagine a palace of words’ and write down the ones that would live in it.

‘The book was designed to show the reader how they can apply that thinking to their life. What I love about artists' words — I mean, I’ve been interviewing them for over a decade now — is that while they are often in relation to their art, they’re also so much about life,’ she says. ‘I love this idea that actually artistic thinking is so important because it applies to every single job that there is. Whether you're a politician or an accountant, you always work creatively, whatever you do.’

Katy was born in 1994 in north London. Her mother, a psychotherapist, and father, who works in property, sent her to the prestigious Westminster School. ‘It was just absolutely amazing,’ she says, ‘and I never really take anything for granted.’ Highlights included Art History classes inside the nearby National Gallery and the chance to observe London’s skyline from the roof of Westminster Abbey (which is attached to the school).

When Katy was 17 she worked at Sotheby’s, as an intern, and then at 18 at the Victoria Miro Gallery, manning the front desk. ‘I wanted to be close to it and I wanted to know how it worked,’ she says of the art world, ‘but I always thought people who wrote books were sort of [out of reach], I never thought that I could be one of them, ever.’ Did she always want to write? ‘Absolutely not,’ Katy says. ‘I was a terrible writer.’ However, her daily Instagram posts on great female artists gave her the space to practice.

Despite her route into writing, Katy is concerned about AI and electronic devices: ‘So many of us look at the world through our screens and forget to pay attention to the world outside. I sort of wrote [the book] for myself in lots of ways, because I was finding that I was just being constantly distracted or, you know, imagination just seems to be outsourced by AI, and actually, that's completely not the point — the creativity is about the joy and the doing.’

She is endearingly modest about her inclusion on Forbes’s ‘30 Under 30’ list. ‘It’s just so lovely to be recognised and art history is often dismissed, so I hope my work brings people in,’ she says. Ultimately, she wants ‘young people to feel like they belong in museums’. She thinks we are lucky that they are free in this country, so that everyone, regardless of their financial situation, can experience world-class art. And she shows no signs of slowing down. The writer has another book coming out in 2027, and a children’s book based on The Story of Art Without Men (for 8-13 year olds) coming out next year.

Your aesthetic hero

I have a few. One of my heroes, just generally, is a mythographer called Marina Warner, and I love her house because it has more books than bricks in it. I think that's such an amazing way to live. And in terms of art, I love the collector, Pauline Karpidas. I'm also sort of weirdly obsessed with noughties decor. So I just love the River Cafe [in Hammersmith, London] and Ruth Rogers’s aesthetic.

The best present you’ve ever received

Recently Bella Freud [the fashion designer] gifted me a suit. We did a sort of art history summer school together, and we both wore matching, different-coloured suits — she wore blue, I wore pink. That was a pretty great gift.

A hotel you could go back and back to

I’m currently in New York and I always stay at a place called The Manner in SoHo. I love it, it just feels like home.

The person that would play you in a film of your life

Not that I would ever compare my looks — because she's absolutely beautiful — but people do say maybe our hair is similar, so I think probably Daisy Edgar-Jones.

The thing that gets you up in the morning

Life gets me up. It's always so exciting. I spend my life looking at art and I am so lucky. You know, it might not last forever, so at the moment, it's definitely life and art and writing and seeing as much as possible.

The items you collect

I’m an art collector. I run a residency every year for young artists, and have done since 2018, and I've collected pieces by all the artists who've done my residency. My flat is just filled with art, but everything has a personal story. I know every artist personally, whose work I have in my flat.

The most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten

Speaking recently, I actually think my best meal of 2025 has been at The Devonshire [in Soho, London]. I had the scallops, beef, and then the prawn cocktail and — oh my god — their sticky toffee pudding, which was the best thing in the world.

The last podcast you listened to

The last one was one I'm really obsessed with at the moment called Song Exploder, where they basically interview musicians about why they wrote songs and how they wrote them. Honestly, it's just so interesting.

What you’d take to a desert island

I would take a piano. I would take my friends. I would take maybe something for a party — a speaker, maybe a barbecue — and then some games, probably Monopoly Deal.

A book you found inspiring

For me, it's got to be The Lonely City by Olivia Laing. I read it when I was 21 and it really actually changed how I saw art, but also it opened up the possibilities of how art could be written about. The concept is that it looks at the loneliness of New York through the eyes of a few different artists, like Andy Warhol, Edward Hopper, David Wojnarowicz and Henry Darge, and it basically just showed me that there are so many different ways of writing about art, which I just loved. It sort of gave me permission to write how I wanted to, because I always thought that you had to write in a certain way, but actually you don't. You can find your own voice.

An exhibition that has impressed you

This is a very hard question to answer, but one exhibition that completely amazed me this year was ‘Leigh Bowery!’ at the Tate Modern. I had no idea who he was and I just loved it. I loved it for its energy, and I had never really experienced something like that before. He was an iconic figure in the 1980s and was so groundbreaking, and what I loved about it was that it was just so fun. Afterwards, I just wanted to go dancing. I literally called my best friend after and we went dancing all night because I was so excited by the exhibition.

A possession you’d never sell

I have all these notebooks from when I was a teenager. They're art diaries, leather-bound, and I wrote little art reviews in them when I was younger. I'd never like to part with them because they're very special to me.

The music you work to

I listen to Philip Glass when I work, but also when I don't work. It just sends me to another place, and I find it so beautiful as piano music. You're in a dream world when you listen to it and it has no voices, so you can't be distracted by that. It also reminds me of certain times of my life.

Your favourite painting

I feel very bad that it's actually not a woman, but How to Live an Artful Life does include men as well, so I think that's fair enough. I absolutely adore The Tempest by Oskar Kokoschka, who was around in Vienna at the turn of the century. For me, it just sums up the tumultuousness, but reality and also the romance, of love. It’s of two figures, Oscar Kokoschka and his then-lover, Alma Mahler. He's awake and she's asleep, and they're on a sort of cloud, and it shows how, with love, how you can totally be enraptured by a cloud and be in another world, and it feels so incredible. But then there's also the reality of it, and I think he just sums it up so well. It's so romantic. So that's probably my favourite painting. It's not by a woman, but whatever, it's fine. I've spoken about women a lot.

Katy Hessel’s book ‘How to Live an Artful Life’ is out November 6, 2025. You can pre-order it here.