Julie Jones

Julie Jones enjoyed a full, rich and productive life, touching for the better scores of others over the years.  She passed away just over a month before her 86th birthday; many will know a portion of her story, but her full journey was supremely a life well lived.

Early Years

Julie Jones was born in 1935 in San Diego and spent part of her early childhood in Salt Lake City. Her mother and father, Barbara Newman and Burke Jones, both from Mormon families in Utah, married young, had two daughters, and divorced a few years later. Barbara, who Julie would often say was the smartest person she ever met, found work with a local radio station in Salt Lake City and eventually moved her two young daughters, Julie and Gael, to San Francisco, where she worked for Voice of America for several years. 

The family lived in San Francisco during World War II and that's where Barbara met and married Donald ("Don") Pryor, who covered the war for CBS. They later moved to Washington, D.C., and then to Geneva, Switzerland, where Don worked for the United Nations and Barbara gave birth to Julie's brother, Tony. The family then lived in New York for a short period of time before returning to D.C. As a young adult, Julie spent time in Paris, studying French and living with a family there. These experiences likely helped cement Julie’s enduring love of travel and curiosity for the world. 

Julie graduated from George Washington University with a major in French literature. She always liked to say that, at the time, the main career option for women was to be a typist and because she wasn’t very good at that, she decided to become a museum curator. The truth is only a little less fantastical. At the end of college, Julie developed a love for museums and Precolumbian art while working at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., selling postcards “and telling people how to find the ladies’ room.”

After a brief period in New York after school, she decided to pursue her passion and returned to the National Gallery job, taking evening classes in art history to apply for graduate school. She was accepted into the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU, launching both her career in the museum world and her career as a New Yorker. 

Julie's Career

As part of the IFA program in 1958, Julie held an internship at the now defunct Museum of Primitive Art, founded by Nelson Rockefeller. She was soon offered a full-time position as research assistant and worked her way up to curator. In 1975, she moved with that collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she became Curator of Precolumbian art in the newly established Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas (AAOA). 

During her 38-year tenure at the Met, Julie served 21 years as the head of the AAOA department, including six years as Andrall E. Pearson Curator in Charge. The Met describes her as a “preeminent scholar of Precolumbian art” and named her Curator Emerita after she retired in 2013. She continued to keep an office in the museum, where she worked until the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The Met described Julie’s work in a recent announcement about her death: 

"Julie was a beloved member of the staff for 38 years… Julie’s leadership and scholarship were integral to the success of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing from its founding until her retirement in 2013. She organized a number of exhibitions showcasing the art of the ancient American world, including Desert Valley: Early Works from Ica, Peru (1983); The Art of Precolumbian Gold: The Jan Mitchell Collection (1985); Houses for the Hereafter, Funerary Temples of Guerrero, Mexico (1987); Andean FourCornered Hats (1990); Ancient Peruvian Mantles (1995); Jade in Ancient Costa Rica (1999); Heritage of Power: Ancient Sculpture from West Mexico—The Andrall E. Pearson Family Collection (2004); and The Andean Tunic (2011). Julie Jones also contributed to Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries (1990), and served on the Editorial Board of the Metropolitan Museum Journal for 25 years. 

As head of the department, she oversaw the renovation of a number of Rockefeller Wing galleries, including the Jan Mitchell Treasury for Precolumbian Works of Art in Gold, and an extensive renovation of the Oceanic galleries. Julie continued to be a vital presence in the Michael C. Rockefeller Department until shortly before her death. Julie’s passion and dedication for her field of study – and her ever-lively personality – were treasured by all who knew her, and she will be greatly missed."

Julie was a long time friend and supporter of the Precolumbian collection at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC, as well as a member of the Advisory Panel for the Kislak Foundation Collection at the Library of Congress, both of which would send her to Washington regularly over the years after her retirement.

The Seaport and New York Life

Julie’s career as a New Yorker was no less engaging. After two decades living in Manhattan, Julie bought her beloved loft on Water Street in South Street Seaport in 1979, in a building within 200 feet of the Brooklyn Bridge.  The building initially housed a cracker factory, provisioning the many tall ships docked in the East River a block away, and then was used as a records repository before being turned into lofts. For years she served as the co-op treasurer, lending her fastidiousness and exacting insights to the building’s daily operations.

A lifelong animal lover, Julie and her beloved German Short Haired Pointer Bella were fixtures in Central Park for years but Bella sadly was exiled to Washington to accomodate Julie's Lexington Ave. neighbors, before Julie's move to Water Street.  Julie kept an eye on the downtown neighborhood wildlife, notably domesticating (in her words, ‘befriending’) a cat she named Sydney, that had gotten in over its head with some tabbys in the Seaport’s fish market. Beginning in her 40s, Julie became an avid and accomplished equestrian, frequently going on riding trips in the City and Connecticut.

New York uniquely suited Julie’s fascination with the everyday details of people and life. She would chat up the deli owner on her corner, strike up conversation with a passerby or take her co-op neighbor out for drinks. She would spend as much time meticulously taking in the exhibits of any museum as she would carefully combing through vintage stores for a household item. Julie sought out theater, music, and art that was off the beaten path and would often accompany or invite her nieces to obscure shows all over New York. She was as happy to attend an opening at the Met as she was to accompany a friend to a  delicious hole in the wall or attend a play at a leather bar with her niece—nothing ever curbed her interest in the world around her.

She also enjoyed leaving the Big Apple from time to time, beyond her various work related trips.  This included exploring the world with the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), whose members shared a love for slooooow study tours to Cuba, China, the Baltic and elsewhere.  She often joined her family and friends in Connecticut, West Virginia, Maine and other nearby places, just to get out of the city, as well as visiting relatives in Salt Lake City and exploring the colorful history of her relative Willie Betty Newman. Over the years she also made the trek out to Australia to visit her dear sister Gael, and to Kenya and then Washington, D.C. to visit her brother Tony and his family.

A Deep Dedication to Collecting Unusual Art and Lasting Friendships

While Julie’s personal taste in art mirrored her particular New York style (antiques and crafts that suited her post-industrial loft), it also reflected more complex aspects of her character—one possibly shaped by being a woman in a male-dominated career, a baby in the Great Depression, and a child to a family often in motion. Julie was a prolific collector of ships in a bottle and kept a dozen or so of them lining a spotlit alcove in her apartment. This gave way to an interest in all things bottled, including several works by artist Mae Wilson that featured little girl dolls contorted to fit in small glass bottles. Julie had several pieces of Wilson’s work, an artist who also collected and honored the mundane, but important object.

Her love of art was also inspired by her great-aunt, Willie Betty Newman, who was a renowned painter and “a lady of outsized personality.”  Julie worked with her mother to systematically document and inventory all of Newman's works; Julie was particularly enthralled with Newman's strong belief that no doors need limit someone with drive, enthusiasm and an inability to be encumbered by propriety.  At her best, Newman went to Paris to study painting and exhibited still lifes and landscapes at the salons, before returning to Cincinnati to be constrained by the business of art, ending up focused on painting "white men in dark suits", as Julie summarized Newman's later work. 

Julie’s home also featured the art of the people she loved. Throughout the apartment Julie proudly featured many pieces by friend and artist John Willenbacher. In her large walk-in closet, Julie filled her space with notes, gifts and cards from loved ones. Here she showcased her deep devotion and loyalty to family, with many pictures and postcards from Tony and Gael and their families. Julie maintained a close friendship and allyship with her siblings over the decades and, in Gael’s case, across thousands of miles of ocean. A private person who often kept her family, friends, and colleagues separate, Julie’s closet is a tribute to the deep love she had for all the people she held dear. 

Truly, Julie never stopped learning and seeking knowledge. She had a sharp wit and spoke her mind. She was a supreme gift-giver and loved nothing more than to have a meal with friends and family, accompanied by a nice glass of wine. She will be greatly missed by all who knew her. 

Her New Career as an Ancestor

Julie passed away peacefully in hospice care with family at her side in Maryland on July 22, 2021. She is survived (and missed) by her sister, Gael Boon, and brother, Tony Pryor; her nieces and nephews, Anthony, Aimee, Madeleine, Rebecca, and Ben; her cousin, Christopher; and many cousins and relatives of the Jones and Newman families in Salt Lake. As one of her close colleagues shared with the family, "the Incas believed that this stage of life was not an ending but the beginning of a new career as an ancestor."