Carole Jury is a French abstract painter based in United States. Photography © Christophe Pouget
1.In your opinion what is the role of a museum?
Overall, the two main common mission museums have are:
– to ensure accessibility for the general public and equal access to all for education and culture
– to allow the conservation of the permanent collections they house by managing the presentation of this heritage to the public.
As am artist, I am tempted to add a specific one to our profession, that of “bibliography research” or “art review” which ultimately corresponds to the process of knowing what exists before creating something ourselves. Thus, the museum becomes a vital resource for artists.
2.What are your favorite museums in the world? Why?
Choosing a favorite museum is difficult because each museum has its own particularity from its collections, its programming, its identity and its soul. It is impossible to remain indifferent and not to experience pleasure when you discover places and incredible collections of works such as the Prado in Spain, the Louvre in Paris, the Met in New York or the British museum in London.
Therefore, the size, the popularity and the diversity of works are not the criteria that will determine which museum is a better museum. It is up to each one to interpret the history or the experience, the spirit of the place, the works, the staging will be perceived individually during a visit.
The Salvador Dalì museum, located in Figueres in Spain, is the one I have visited the most. I needed to go back there, to find this place was for several years, a kind of pilgrimage. It is one of those places where one penetrates inside the artist’s work, his artistic intimacy.
It is like an almost magical place, enchanting and unreal and yet the work always brings us back to a love story between the artist and his work, a love story between an artist and his muse.
3.How important are social networks in your business? And which platform do you prefer and why.
The place of social media nowadays, is essential to promote works, events… For my part, I give it a lot of time and importance. It is part of my daily work. However, I try to have a reasoned investment so as not to waste time with supports which do not correspond or hardly correspond to the stakeholders whom I wish to target. It is a complicated exercise since each of these platforms evolve very quickly.
This multiplicity of virtual communities reinforces the complexity of the choices to be made; that is to say “to invest in it or not” since it is essential to commit fully to obtain results. For my work, I identified my stakeholders to whom I attached the social media platforms that I use.
– For collectors, buyers, prospects, art professionals: Artsy, Saatchi Art, Singulart, LinkedIn.
– For the general public, art professionals, private circle: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.
– For interior designers: Pinterest. – For the local: Whatsapp, Alignable, Homeis.
4.In particular, due to the coronavirus emergency, how have you changed your business on social networks?
The coronavirus pandemic pushes us to live a new and completely unpredictable situation. All activities are completely changed, including art. All exhibitions, artistic meetings are cancelled, or impacting postponed. This will have significant economic impact for the art world, whether directly artists, galleries, organizers of exhibitions or suppliers of artistic products.
So, I have put online a virtual exhibition in the same way that museums and galleries offer. The main idea is not to sell but to offer another model of an entertaining artistic exhibition visit to my followers on social media, my collectors, my friends and my family. It is an opportunity to test new means of exhibiting your art, but also a good way to prepare the step after the coronavirus. It is still too early to assess its impact.
5.To create greater engagement among museums, artists and professionals, do you have any advice for cultural projects such as #MuseumWeek?
The 2020 program covers a large part of current topics, which concern each of us in our daily life. The epidemic of the coronavirus which affects the entire planet today highlights the importance of the social bond and therefore that of social networks…
Virtual visits should thus become more important with quizzes, podcast on the themes of the #MuseumWeek, interviews with emergent artists and professional ones as well as publications in online magazines… finally enough to feed and make you want to visit the exhibitions as soon as life resumes its normal.
Interview by Fabio Pariante, journalist
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Carole Jury on social networks: Twitter – Instagram – Facebook
Carole Jury is a French born artist from Lyon based in Princeton, New Jersey. She is a photographer and an abstract painter and she associates the two medium of expression to create works that live between lights, shadows and shades, especially in the colors of red, blue, white and black. Carole is sponsored by Daler-Rowney and her work “Lagoon Series” has been chosen as official poster for the 2020 edition of #MusuemWeek, which has “#togetherness” as its main theme and hashtag.
