Art Gallery’s first female director tasked with making it less ‘woke’

The first female director of the Art Gallery of NSW has been challenged to make the 154-year-old institution “less woke” in order to “resurrect” its flagging financial fortunes.

The first female director of the Art Gallery of NSW has been challenged to make the 154-year-old institution “less woke” in order to “resurrect” its flagging financial fortunes.

New boss and rugby league fan Maud Page believes she has what it takes to make the highbrow institution appeal beyond Sydney’s silver tails to the whole of NSW.

French-born Ms Page has been promoted from deputy director to director after a $154,000 global search to find a replacement for outgoing director Dr Michael Brand.

Celebrated Archibald winning artist and former Art Gallery of NSW trustee Tim Storrier said the state’s top art institution had been hijacked by political ideology and become “predictable” and a “disaster” during Dr Brand’s 13-year reign.

“The Art Gallery of NSW has been hijacked by the woke left. There is a dreadful predictability in an institution that is dealing with the ramifications of political idealism,” Mr Storrier said.

Maud Page, new director of Art Gallery of NSW. Picture: AGNSW / Anna Kucera

“The challenge for the new director is to make it less woke to try and resurrect the place.”

The Art Gallery has doubled in size thanks to a $344 million new Sydney Modern wing, now known as Naala Badu, but is struggling to find the cash to run it.

Without taxpayer funding of $65 million last year it would have made a loss of more than $30 million.

Government funding has remained about one third of the Gallery’s $150 million revenue, with a one-off payment last year of $12 million to help cover a recurrent shortfall then estimated at $16 million.

To try and cut costs the Gallery has axed 30 full and part-time roles after staff numbers jumped by almost a third in five years to 333 on an average salary of $103,000.

Shadow art spokesman Kevin Anderson said the Gallery is operating under “a cloud of increasing expenses” and budget black holes.

“With the addition of Sydney Modern, the Art Gallery of NSW should be the premier art gallery in Australia but the best and highest profile exhibitions continue to be lost to Melbourne.”

The National Gallery of Victoria had 2.84 million visitors in 2024 with the ticketed Pharaoh exhibition welcoming 336,000 visitors alone.

The AGNSW had 2.2 million visitors and held four ticketed exhibitions attended by 384,743 visitors.

Ms Page said she would continue to put on blockbuster exhibitions like Magritte and school holiday programs that appeal to a wide audience.

“I would really love us to be reaching out to different communities throughout Sydney and NSW,” she said.

“I come from a rugby family, my husband played union and my son plays league and I spend time watching from the sidelines in Mount Druitt,” she said.

“I would love to see more people like that at the gallery.”

AGNSW president Michael Rose said that understanding “the art of the biff” made Ms Page the perfect candidate for the job.

He said Ms Page would be working on making the gallery more accessible to the people of NSW.

“Thinking about them rather than thinking about us,” he said.

Iconic Australian fashion brand Carla Zampatti’s chief executive Alex Schuman said that new leadership could see the AGNSW embrace other popular art forms.

“What really brings people into art galleries like the Louvre in Paris or the Metropolitan Museum in New York are fashion exhibitions,” he said.

“It would be amazing to see the same thing at the AGNSW.”

Arts Minister John Graham said Ms Page had already helped drive up annual visitor numbers for the AGNSW to be ranked 28 out of the 100 most visited institutions in the world.

“I look forward to Ms Page’s leadership and programming that engages new audiences from across Western Sydney, young and old,” he said.

Originally published as Art Gallery’s first female director tasked with making it less ‘woke’