top of page

About the Founder

Juliette Yuan was born in Beijing to a ballerina and a university professor passionate about photography, literature, Western opera, and sports. Majored in the French language in college, Juliette worked for Air France for two years ​as a C-level Executive Assistant after graduation before pursuing her Master's in French literature in Paris. She entered the art world by working for a Chinese antique gallery in Paris, where, for four years, she gained her first knowledge and hands-on experience in high-end art gallery business management by organizing gallery and auction sales and serving professional dealers and high-net-worth clients from Europe and North America. Inspired by a group of influential French artists and architects, she soon discovered her real calling in modern and contemporary art.  

Juliette began exploring the international contemporary art world by promoting European contemporary artists' work to mainland China. Working as an independent curator allowed her to collaborate extensively with museums, academies, governmental institutions, foreign embassies, local and international art festivals,

Xiaoying Juliette Yuan [portrait 2_2024].jpeg

Photo credit JY&A New York @ 2024

biennales, art fairs, and various industries. Notable experiences include:

These opportunities and forefront positions gave her unique connections in the international art world, insight into different policies in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan toward the Western art world, and a deep understanding of their cultures and mentalities in socializing and conducting businesses.​

Founded in the summer of 2018, JY&A explores a mini art hotel business model combining a home-based art gallery and private property rental to promote contemporary art, in particular, art created with cutting edge technology, to a global audience. Operating out of a prewar residential apartment in the Upper East Side, Manhattan, Juliette collaborates with a group of New York-based artists to create regularly changing interior design with small-scale art exhibitions, showcasing artworks of different mediums and forms at museum quality, offering art collectors and global travelers the unique opportunity of learning, experiencing, and living within contemporary art in the most historic and prestigious neighborhood of New York City. From 2018 to the present, with 13 exhibitions online and on-site, Juliette attracted more than 100 new art buyers and global travelers to New York, visiting and staying at her mini art hotel, realized 19 domestic and international art sales, including two Chinese private museum buyers' acquisitions during the pandemic, drove a new business from ground up to profitable with 3.5 times nightly room rate increase with growing occupancy despite the disruption of three years of global pandemic. Besides, Juliette is also a USPAP-Compliant Fine Art Appraiser and an Accredited Member of the Appraisers Association of America, serving worldwide private, corporate, and institutional collectors with professional art consultation, valuation, and IRS-standardized fine art appraisal report writing for various purposes. 

Juliette has been editor and guest editor to international publication projects in China and the United Kingdom, published articles in reputable art and architecture magazines, and actively lectured and spoken at top universities and art schools such as New York University, the School of Visual Arts, University at Buffalo, Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing, China), and numerous international research conferences. She owns a Master's Degree from La Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris III University (Paris, France) in Comparative Literature, accomplished six years of Ph.D. coursework in Arts, Humanities, and Business at the University of Plymouth (Plymouth, UK), and was a one-year visiting scholar at Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University (New York, USA). 

bottom of page