This formidable blonde wants to live until she's at least 100 and her favourite place is Brazil.
If it all went wrong, she would happily start again at a Sainsbury's checkout.
Serpentine - one of the top 10 most visited art galleries in the UK, attracting 1.2 million people, making it the world’s 66th most visited arts institution.
Not a bad show for what was a tea-room built by the Royal Parks in 1934, which became a gallery in 1970.
Making art pay its way is also why the 63-year-old painter turned curator is on the short-list for the Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year award.
Peyton-Jones has two galleries to run – the Serpentine and the Serpentine Sackler, the old ammunition store that was renovated two years ago by the Pritzker-winning architect Zaha Hadid – who also designed the first pavilion.
Her biggest bite to date was to take over the old gunpowder store and raise the £14.5m needed to create the Serpentine Sackler and Hadid’s new restaurant.
Using American-style fundraising tactics, she brought in the Sacklers, the Wolfson Foundation, Carphone Warehouse’s co-founder David Ross and many others to back the enterprise; not a penny of public money was used until it opened.
Only 15 per cent of total expenditure comes from the Arts Council.
This, says Ms Peyton-Jones, is now one of the lowest ratios of public subsidies per visitor for any arts organisation in the UK: £6 is raised privately for every £1 of public funding; an astonishing feat at a time when public arts subsidies are falling.
And entry for the public is free.
Princess Diana was the one to set the seal on the Serpentine’s party: she was photographed arriving at the party on 29 June, 1994, wearing the “revenge dress” and shaking hands with Peyton-Jones as Prince Charles was telling all to Jonathan Dimbleby on TV.
Curriculum Vitae: A career in paint.
Name: Julia Peyton-Jones OBE.
Born: 18 February 18 1952.
Education: 1975-78: Studied painting at the Royal College of Art, London.
Career: A painter in London – two of her works hang in the Bank of England – and lecturer in fine art at Edinburgh College of Art. Between 1978 and 1988 she was the curator in the exhibitions department at the Hayward Gallery.
In 1991 she became a director of the Serpentine Gallery, responsible for both commissioning and showcasing the groundbreaking exhibitions, education and public programmes.
Outside interests: Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Art; Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects; Professor of the University of the Arts London.
Favourite painting: Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter.
Favourite restaurant: Daquise, a Polish restaurant in South Kensington, where she takes visiting artists and patrons. People can play cards and they let you bring your dog.
Favourite pastime: Walking with her Jack Russell, Charlie.
- An interview with Julia Peyton-Jones | ArtsProfessional
- The woman who attracted art, celebrity and lots of cash | The Times
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