Maria Balshaw

Maria Balshaw is director of The Whitworth, University of Manchester, which is Museum of the Year 2015, and Manchester City Galleries. For her episode of Artsnight, Maria Balshaw asks why, over a century since the Suffragette movement, are women still not equal?

To help her answer the question, she talks to artist Sarah Lucas, who emerged onto the British art scene in the late 1980s as one of the YBAs, or young British artists, who gives an extremely rare TV interview to Artsnight. Maria also talks to Glenda Jackson, undoubtedly one of our key public figures with two highly successful careers - one in acting and one in politics. And in a quest to understand how to redress the imbalance, she profiles collector Valeria Napoleone, a major collector who only collects art made by women artists, and looks at the women-only art Max Mara Art Prize.