GWA Newsletter: March
Updates, and my monthly cultural round-up
Dear Readers,
Happy Women’s History Month! In this newsletter we’re celebrating with a new museum audio guide, a stunning Celia Paul monograph, some very exciting Venice Biennale news, and more. Let’s dive in!
NEW Museums Without Men!
Museums Without Men is an ever-growing audio series highlighting works by women and gender non-conforming artists in museum collections worldwide. We recently launched the eighth audio guide, this time with Vienna’s Belvedere Museum!
This one shines a spotlight on eleven striking works by women artists, including Anna Maria Punz, Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Maria Lassnig, and VALIE EXPORT. Get listening.
Don’t miss our other guides at the Met Museum, Tate, Hirshhorn, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, National Gallery of Australia, and more! All free to listen to.
Join me at Charleston Festival 2025
I’m thrilled to say I’ll be at Charleston Festival on Friday 16th May, 7.30pm, talking all things Vanessa Bell with Wendy Hitchmough, who has just written a new fantastic biography of the artist. Get your ticket here.
Come and hear so many brilliant minds at Charleston Festival, from Roxane Gay, Sarah Lucas, Maggi Hambling (!!), Shon Faye, Deborah Levy, and many more. Tickets!
Celia Paul’s new monograph with MACK
Celia Paul’s breathtaking new monograph, published by MACK, includes 50 years of painting, as well as contributions by Hilton Als, Edmund de Waal, Karl Ove Knausgard — and me. I loved talking to Celia and Edmund last year all about the magic of letter-writing. & Don’t miss Paul’s major exhibition, Colony of Ghosts, at Victoria Miro, from 14 March.
In The Guardian
For The Guardian, I wrote a Valentine’s Day special about art’s power to reflect the expansiveness of love. A preview:
“In the case of Frida Kahlo, art can get us to recognise that we are not the first to go through such treacherousness. The Mexican artist, hailed for her expressive self-portraits, spent her life in physical and emotional agony. As a child she had polio; in her teens she was involved in a bus crash that left her body shattered; as an adult she was in a tumultuous relationship with the artist Diego Rivera. But through transforming pain into beauty – painting tears like white crystals and bodies pierced like Saint Sebastian – she always understood that anything is worth the price of love.”
On Substack
For Substack, I wrote about one of my favourite paintings of all time: Carmen and Judy, 1972, by Alice Neel. A preview:
Motherhood is one of the most popular subjects in art, but rarely, in history, have we seen the mother and child from the perspective of another mother. As Chantal Joffe told me upon seeing this painting, “After centuries of men and Madonnas, suddenly here is the view from the woman herself.”
Lubaina Himid to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale!
I am so excited that Lubaina Himid will be representing Britain at the 2026 Venice Biennale (aka the Art Olympics!). A tireless champion of marginalised voices, Himid has dedicated her thirty-year-plus career to uncovering silenced histories, and I cannot wait to see what she does with the British Pavilion.
You can listen to my conversation with Lubaina for the GWA podcast here.
And now for my cultural recommendations for March. Enjoy! Love, Katy Xoxo
10 great shows to see in the UK:
The Face Magazine: Culture Shift at the National Portrait Gallery, London, until 18 May
Gate of Horns at Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate, until 15 Apr
Anne Rothenstein at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, from 14 March
Paule Vezelay: Living Lines at RWA, Bristol, until 27 Apr
Ithell Colquhoun at Tate St Ives, until 5 May
SOIL at Somerset House, London, until 13 Apr
Barbara Steveni at Modern Art Oxford, until 1 Mar
Alia Ahmad at White Cube, London, until 5 Apr
Verena Loewensberg at Hauser & Wirth, London, until 17 Apr
Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 ‒1350 at The National Gallery, London, until 22 Jun
9 great shows to see outside the UK:
Lisa Yuskavage at David Zwirner, Los Angeles, until 12 Apr
Nan Goldin at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, until 6 Apr
Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie at The Met, New York, until 17 Aug
Tarsila do Amaral at Guggenheim Bilbao until 1 Jun
Jenny Saville at the Albertina, Vienna, until 29 Jun
Beatriz Milhazes at Guggenheim New York, until 14 Sep
Elizabeth Gower at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, until 29 Mar
Barbara Kruger at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark, until 21 Apr
Laura Owens at Matthew Marks, New York, until 19 Apr
7 great things to read:
Katherine Rundell: Why Children’s Books? via LRB
A Black Gaze by Tina M. Campt
Vanessa Bell: The Life and Art of a Bloomsbury Radical by Wendy Hitchmough
Why Do Artists Wear Masks, via HTSI
Who’s Afraid of Gender by Judith Butler
Look at Me by Anita Brookner
Grace Slick on sex, drugs and Jefferson Airplane, via The Guardian
6 great things to listen to:
Somaya Critchlow via A Brush With
Mickalene Thomas via Talk Art
Helen Charman and Lola Olufemi via London Review Bookshop Podcast
Zoe Leonard in Conversation with Rebecca Solnit via Whitney Museum
Yoko Ono in Focus via NTS
La Pasionaria: Heroine of the Spanish civil war via Witness History
6 great things to do/see in London:
Claudia Rankine: New Approaches to Autobiography talk at the Barbican, Thursday 27 March
A Night of Brazilian Music and Modernism at the Royal Academy, Friday 7 March
Photomontage Workshop at Southbank Centre, Friday 21 March
I’m Still Here at the cinema
Charlie Porter in conversation with Olivia Laing at Daunt Books Marylebone, Thursday 20 March
Inspiring Women highlights tours at the National Portrait Gallery; multiple dates from 7 March onwards!
5 great artists to know:
Soheila Sokhanvari (b.1964)
Mandy el Sayegh (b.1985)
Carrington (1893—1932)
Sasha Gordon (b.1998)
Frida Orupabo (b.1986)
That’s it from me! Happy GWA’ing. Thank you for reading this Substack. If you think someone else might enjoy this too, please spread the word and share this article. If you have any feedback — or your own March recommendation! — please comment below.
This was such a rich and inspiring roundup — thank you, Katy! The Museums Without Men project is such a vital and overdue reframing of the art historical canon. I loved the Frida Kahlo passage you wrote for The Guardian too — “anything is worth the price of love” gave me chills. And now I’m adding Colony of Ghosts and the Alice Neel monograph to my must-see/must-read list. Appreciate the care, joy, and scholarship you bring to each post. You make Women’s History Month feel alive.
Happy Women's History Month to you too :)
Shout out for Barbara Walker's 'Being Here', fresh from Manchester, which opens tonight, until 25th May at The Arnolfini in Bristol
https://arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/barbarawalker/