Fine Art Advisory and Appraisal Services
关于JY&A创始人
About the Founder
Xiaoying Juliette Yuan was born and grew up in Beijing in an intellectual family. Her mother was a professional dancer and later an antique dealer in France; her father was a university professor passionate about photography, Western opera and literature, and sports. At six years old, Juliette was sent to live with her grandparents, who, both raised in traditional and bourgeois families in Beijing and Shanghai, signed her up for English language and classic dance classes. These classes opened her mind to Western cultures and cultivated her sense of beauty and grace. They also shaped her personality with positive traits such as self-discipline, belief in hard-working, and persistence.
Juliette majored in the French language in college and worked for Air France Beijing Delegation before she went to Paris to pursue a Master's degree in French literature. She entered the art world in 2001 by working for a Chinese antique gallery in Paris, dealt with a wide range of high-net-worth collectors in Europe and North America, and gained hands-on
experience in business strategy, management, client-facing, Chinese antique valuation, historical research, cataloging, auction sales planning, and handling complicated global transactions. Inspired by a group of influential French artists and architects she frequented in her spare time, she soon discovered her real passion in European modern and contemporary art.
The 20th century was the most glorious time for mainland China since new China's foundation in 1949. The booming economy and the favorable government policies for science and technology provided an encouraging environment for art professionals to experiment with more audacious endeavors. Juliette began exploring the art market in mainland China in 2004 by promoting European contemporary artists' works to nonprofits, museums, and international festivals. Working as an independent curator and advisor allowed her to collaborate extensively with museums, academies, governmental institutions, foreign embassies, local and international art festivals, biennials, art fairs, and different industries. Some memorable experiences include managing and consulting 70 Asia-Pacific art galleries and ten large curatorial programs at the ShContemporary Art Fair in Shanghai (2008), an initiative between Lorenzo Rudolf, the former co-founder of Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland, and Miami Beach, USA, and Italy's number one exhibition company, BolognaFiere Group; assisting the Imperial City Art Museum of Beijing in the daily operation of the museum and its New Media Art curatorial program (2009); producing and curating the British telematic art pioneer Roy Ascott's first China retrospective at the 9th Shanghai Biennial (2012). These opportunities and forefront positions provided her with unique connections in the international art world, with insight into mainland China's policies toward the Western art world, offering her a deep understanding of the differences between Chinese and Western mentalities in conducting business.
Juliette started providing advisory services between Asian and Western art markets in 2016, at the end of four years living and working in New York. In 2017, She strategized the collaboration between Postmasters Gallery (New York) and ShanghArt Gallery (Shanghai), facilitated their co-presentation at the West Bund Art & Design Fair in Shanghai, and their long-term co-representation of American artist David Diao in Asia. At the foundation of JY&A in 2018, Juliette cultivated a new Chinese collectors' market in New York through an Art Salon program from her apartment in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. During the pandemic lockdown, she shifted all of JY&A's activities online. In 2021, upon Beeple's groudbreaking NFT sale at Christie's New York, she teamed up with a group of international digital artists, copyright attorneys, art collectors, auction experts, and wealth managers to investigate the complexity and legal issues of NFT and Art, Capital, and Social Values. The panels received great feedback from nearly 300 attendees from related industries.
Juliette has contributed to institutional publication projects with publishers in China and the United Kingdom as editor and guest editor, 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). She is an Accredited Member of the Appraisers Association of America and a USPAP Compliant Fine Art Appraiser. An art collector complimented recently on a museum donation appraisal she prepared for Sharon Chrust & Associates (Stamford, CT) as "incredibly well done."