The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel

“I don’t write the headlines,” is the cry of the journalist who has seen their balanced, on-the-one-hand-this, on-the-other-hand-that column traduced by a clickbait screamer. There’s a little of that to the art historian Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men (on the cover, the “Without Men” bit is faded to a barely-there outline).

Already, I was enraged. Ready to take to Twitter to vent my fury at this preposterous concept. How can you have a history of art without men? Behind every successful woman artist is an encouraging father, an enlightened tutor or an open-eyed dealer. Huff, humph, hashtag.