Deviant Women

In this provocative tour, art historian Melissa Baksh traces how artists have imagined women who refuse passivity: figures who retaliate, resist, and seize agency in worlds that seek to control them. Moving across myth, scripture - and modern re-tellings, the tour asks how deviance has been used to label female power, and how acts of revenge and self-determination have been framed as transgression. Pause and consider Salome, Lorenzo Lotto's 'Portrait of a Woman inspired by Lucretia',- and Paula Rego's 'Crivelli's Garden'.

Melissa Baksh is a London-based art historian, writer, curator, educator, and broadcaster/DJ. A desire to make art accessible and open up art collections to a wide range of audiences underpins her work. As well as at the National Gallery, she has delivered lectures, tours and workshops at the Hayward Gallery, Wellcome Collection and the National Gallery of Umbria. She has written for publications including The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, The Art Newspaper, Frieze and ArtReview on historical and contemporary art, colonial legacies and public art.