Hestia Bavelaar (1961) is assistant professor Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of  Utrecht.

She studied Art History with the minors Museology and Psychology at the University of  Leyden. She was editor and art critic of the Dutch

magazines Decorum and Beelding. She started as a teacher Visual Arts and Visual Analysis at the Free Academy (Vrije Academie) in The Hague. In 1991 she published a monography about the Japanese born artist Shinkichi Tajiri. Since 1989 she works as an assistant professor Modern Art and Art Policy at the University of Utrecht. In 1997 she obtained her doctorate with a dissertation on the multidisciplinary art magazine Kroniek van Kunst en Kultuur (1935-1965), in which Dutch art and culture is explored in an international context. In her teachings she focuses on art theoretical and art sociological themes. There is a close connection between her teachings and the art world. In the master-course 'Art Criticism: Practice and Theory' topical issues in the art world are connected to the exercise in art critical and essayistic writing.

Since 2018 she mastercoordinator of the master Art History at Utrecht University.

From 2000 on she also focused on modern and contemporary non-western art and the globalization of the art world. Especially the way globalization influences – or rather should influence – the academic discipline Art History has her interest. The results of this research can be found in her publication Re-imagining Western Art History in an Age of Globalization. Finding blind spots and shifting Frontiers, Saarbrücken 2015.

Since 2020 she is writing a book about Dutch female artists in Holland in the period 1918-1960. Despite the fact that this interbellum-generation was allowed to attend art academies women artists were still confronted by several barriers to develop as professional artists. Despite the first feminist wave and the establishment of women’s suffrage in 1919, women were still bound to their traditional role as wife and mother. Since the social relations didn’t change significantly until the emancipatory sixties, there is chosen for 1960 as end point.

Inventory of the works by female Dutch artists born between 1890 and 1910 that are located in Dutch museums and the RCE (Rijksdienst voor Cultureel Erfgoed/ State Service Cultural Heritage) demonstrates that the amount of female artists in the period 1918-1960 is innumerable higher than the limited amount that stood the test of time.

The research is conducted from an art-sociological and gender-historical and gender-sensitive perspective. In this way the inclusion and exclusion mechanisms that played a role in the careers of female artists can be shown and clarified.