Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), December 2025. In the depths of the Naala Badu, the vast extension designed by SANAA and inaugurated in 2022, flashes pop. Around a corner, at the heart of a monumental pack of eight dogs frozen in tension of attack, a silhouette stands out. Surrounding her, the unprecedented installation “Havoc” (2025) deploys two groups of oversized canines, teeth bared, muscles tense, suspended in this fragile moment preceding the confrontation. An allegory of diffuse aggressiveness, of a global anxiety that doesn’t yet reveal its name. In the center of this silent drama, a calm and smiling woman poses for the photographers. Maud Page inaugurates the major exhibition of the Sydney International Art Series program, dedicated to Australian Ron Mueck, marking a significant return of the artist to his country over a decade after his last exhibition – and the first in Sydney since 2003. Appointed in March 2025, this French-born woman, who arrived in Australia at 11 years old, becomes the first woman to lead one of the most important cultural institutions, founded in 1871. She is also the second European figure to hold this position, after the British Edmund Capon, who led the museum for 33 years (1978-2011, passed away in 2019). Throughout a journey woven between France, Spain, New Zealand, and Queensland, Maud Page embodies a turning point for the flagship institution of the southern hemisphere. She took the reins after eight years as deputy director. Encounter, in French, around “Ron Mueck: Encounter”, nearly a year after taking office in a museum undergoing redefinition.
“You are the first woman to lead the AGNSW. A question that probably wasn’t asked to your male predecessors: how do you experience this appointment?”
When I speak in public, I joyfully embrace it: “I am the first woman to lead the museum.” Why not celebrate who we are, rather than dwell on the divisions created by these labels? What really interested me in this appointment is that it came from within. Five years ago, against all international candidates, I probably wouldn’t have gotten this position. It took these eight years here, this intimate knowledge of the museum, for it to become possible. Australia is so isolated that the idea that the best would come from the outside still persists. For me, what matters is to value what we have here that is specific – our relationships with the country and its communities – and to understand how this can exist and be recognized on the international stage.
“Your personal trajectory is also a story of displacements…”
In France, my parents were stylists, so different from their surroundings that they chose to leave. My father’s mother was Spanish: we lived in a small village in Spain, where I was educated in an English-speaking school. Then, in Morocco, we met Australians from Melbourne and suddenly Australia entered our field of vision. It was my uncle who sparked my interest in art. A restorer of works in Paris, notably at the Guimet Museum, he made me understand that a work is more than an object: it is an opening, a narrative, a scene. That’s where my interest in other places began to make sense. I first studied international political sciences, then art history. My entire career has taken place within institutions: I was a specialist curator in Pacific art for 14 years at the Queensland Art Gallery, where I contributed to…
