Director of the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) Amanda Coulson answers this week's 20 Questions from Guardian Arts&Culture.

1. What's been your most inspirational moment in the last five years?
The One Family tribute to Jackson Burnside on Bay Street, Boxing Day Junkanoo 2011, without a doubt. It was the first time I saw the topic of "art" addressed directly in the costumes, with dancing portraits, palettes, paintbrushes... It was amazing! All the things dear to Jackson's heart brought to life again in this our ultimate Bahamian art form... it made me think about what my mission was here, in returning home. That moment made me realize how much the gallery had to open up its doors so much wider to the community. On the opening night of our first show, including some of those costumes, we had a rush out and I was intensely moved to see people from all walks of life celebrating together and going into the gallery as if it was their own.

2. What's your least favorite piece of artwork?
Anything shallow or facile, whether it's all craft and no concept or all concept and no craft. Great art - or even merely good art - requires not only technique but also deep thought and a meaningful goal.

3. What's your favorite period of art history?
Aside from the present moment, which is the most exciting and vital, it would have to be 16th century Venetian painting, the masters such as Giorgone, Mantegna, Titan, Tintoretto and Veronese. Although I do have a soft spot for Caravaggio as well, who was more from the Roman school (and I'd like to point out that they were all considered extremely radical and shocking in their time!)

4. What are your top 5 movies of all time?
Antonioni's "Zabriskie Point", of course! Just kidding... If time allows I do love going to the movies and I can enjoy a big silver screen epic as much as an independent production or an animation flick with my family. So, it really could be anything from "Apocalypse Now" to "Lord of the Rings" to "Juno" to "Shrek", depending on my state of mind. My top Bahamian movie is "Children of God" by Kareem Mortimer.

5. Coffee or tea?
Tea in the UK and coffee in Italy. Here I'd rather have a fresh ginger lemonade (or a Switcha!). Always go for what the locals do best!

6. What book are you reading now?
"The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman. It's a book that elucidates how fast nature would take over again if humans would cease to exist, but also explains what can never be reborn, thanks to the destruction we have wrought on our planet. It's a book that gives you great respect for Mother Nature. I'm also flipping through "Caribbean: Crossroads of the World" an exhibition catalogue from a show that was in NY across three museums. There is a copy in our library if anyone from the public wants to come and read it too!

7. What project are you working on now?
I am working on several ... "The John Beadle Project", which opens on April 25 at the NAGB, as well as "Master Artists of The Bahamas", a traveling exhibit that was in Iowa and Florida, opening the same night. Since we plan our calendar though a few years in advance I am already researching the Brent Malone Retrospective we hope to have at the end of 2014; "40 years of Bahamian Painting" for the 40th this summer... the list really goes on and on...

8. What's the last show that surprised you?
A Felix Gonzales-Torres retrospective in Frankfurt a couple of years ago. He was a Cuban-American contemporary artist that died in 1996 in Miami from AIDS-related complications. His practice was very conceptual and, first of all, I thought I knew the work so well that I would be bored by another retrospective and, secondly, I thought it was fairly straightforward, a bit of a one-trick pony. This show, however, was curated by another contemporary artist and choreographer and he completely revitalized the work and made it so relevant and powerful. I took my kids to the show and they completely engaged with these very deep, very adult themes of love and loss, of our singularity but also how we are part of a greater whole. It was pretty amazing.

9. Saxons, One Family, Valley Boys or Roots?
One Family.

10. If you had to be stranded on one Family Island which one would it be?
Eleuthera. It's where both my family hail from originally and where my husband proposed to me.

11. What's the most memorable artwork you've ever seen?
I get to list five movies and one artwork? Not fair! Picasso's "Guernica" in Madrid, which I was able to see at night with no other people in the gallery at the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid, was extremely memorable; it's one of the few overly-reproduced artworks that is not a disappointment in the flesh. The Rothko Chapel in Houston made me really understand how abstract art could connect you to the infinite and I found that a very moving, spiritual experience. Watching Christian Marclay's 24-hour video "Clock"; the full room of Monet's water-lilies at the Orangerie in Paris; Titian's "The Flaying of Marsyas"... sorry I need a top 100!

12. Which artist do you have a secret crush on?
Well, it wouldn't be much of a secret if I shared it in the paper now, would it? But to ease everyone's imagination let's say: Giotto!

13. If you could have lunch with anyone who would it be?
It would be my husband, who I do not see alone often enough. But if not him, it would be one of four great women: Jane Austen, Florence Nightingale, Tina Fey or my mother, who passed when our first daughter was born. As a mother myself now, I find I have a lot of things to apologize for!

14. Who do you think is the most important Bahamian in the country's history?
Always the next baby to be born. We are a country with a longer future than a history and we mustn't forget that.

15. Who is your favorite living artist?
Whoever the last one was to really completely surprise me. That can happen anywhere and by anybody. It can happen at the NE6, at the MoMa or in the studio of an (as yet) unknown artist. To keep the mind open is the true challenge.

16. Sunrise or Sunset?
The golden rays of the late afternoon sun until it drops over the horizon have always been my favorite hours and colors of the day.

17. What role does the artist have in society?
Artists are visionaries and inquisitors. They have to ask difficult questions, form ideas and create images which are ahead of their times. Good art will be understood and proven by future generations and very seldom appreciated by the present.

18. What's your most embarrassing moment?
Asking my husband (who is a diehard romantic to my hardheaded realist), really sarcastically, "What? Are you going to propose or something now?" right before he actually did propose. The fact that he still did is a testament to his patience with me.

19. What wouldn't you do without?
My family.

20. What's your definition of beauty?
A smile after a moment of despair, the sparkle in the eyes of enlightenment, a gentle touch in a moment of need, a single note of love struck in the right chord. I think we are often too caught up in traditional notions of physical beauty to see the inherent beauty of a gesture or a spirit. Confucius said: "Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it."

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