Trained as an artist at Bath Academy of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art, Julien Robson began his curatorial career organizing group exhibitions with colleagues in England. He later worked in the commercial gallery sector in Vienna, Austria for several years, and held teaching positions at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Louisville. Julien has held curatorial positions at the John Hansard Gallery at the University of Southampton, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, and was appointed the first curator of contemporary art at The Speed Art Museum in 2000, a position he held until 2008.

It was while he was interviewing for the Speed that Julien met Al Shands, who asked the young curator which artist’s work he should purchase next. Julien responded, and days later, Al asked Julien to meet him at a London gallery where he would buy Untitled by Anish Kapoor, the artist Julien had suggested. From 2012 until Al’s death in 2021, Julien served as the personal curator of Al’s collection and led the development of the 2014 publication Great Meadows: The Making of Here (2014). 

In 2016, Al asked Julien to serve as the founding director of Great Meadows Foundation, overseeing the development of programming aimed at supporting artists and curators in Kentucky and raising the level of contemporary art discourse. In 2022, he curated the exhibition Rounding the Circle: The Mary and Al Shands Collection at the Speed Art Museum with works bequeathed to the museum. Julien was editor of the 2024 companion publication Rounding the Circle: The Legacy of Mary and Al Shands, to which he contributed a significant essay about the exhibition and his curatorial relationship with Al.

Julien currently serves on the board of the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art (IKT), a professional organization that he’s been a member of since 2001. Julien, along with Joey Yates (KMAC Contemporary Art Museum), were instrumental in bringing the 2022 IKT Congress (including 80+ international curators) to Louisville, Kentucky. Al had enthusiastically helped fund this special initiative through the Great Meadows Foundation, though sadly, died before the conference.