It’s a question many artists in Australia are asked after announcing their profession according to the director of the country’s oldest and most visited art institution.

“I want to be optimistic,” National Gallery of Victoria director Tony Ellwood says. “But there are so many pressures being placed on our artistic communities right now around funding, livelihood, politics. I’ve been in the sector a long time, and I’m finding the last few years probably the toughest I’ve seen, particularly from an artist’s point of view.”

It is a view shared by Art Gallery of NSW director Maud Page when asked about the state of the arts in this country.

“The biggest challenge is about the sustainability of our artists,” she says. “How can we support them to have career pathways? And how do we keep them here in Australia, making art. I know a lot of artists that have to have second jobs, and third jobs even. That’s the hardship, how do we make sure that when people choose to be artists, the country and the ecology can sustain them.”

 

As part of its inaugural Power Players list, Culture asked some of the nation’s leading gallerists how they define Australian art, where they see the sector’s greatest challenges, and what influence looks like in this world.

Many were not happy to even utter the word “power” and that in itself says a lot about the divide in the art ecosystem, where the gatekeepers – the gallerists, dealers and museum directors – hold more power, and earn a lot more money, than the artists.

Ellwood, for example, reportedly earned $760,000 in 2024-25, compared with the average creative on $23,200. It is a big gap and one that is front and centre in Ellwood’s mind.

“You’re using the term ‘power’, I wouldn’t use that term ever,” he says. “I would use influence and responsibility, community engagement, community-mindedness, sensitivity … Making sure that our doors are open and our minds are open to what stories people feel need to be told.

“We advocate behind the scenes quietly all the time … But we can only do so much. It would be nice to see a more strategic, permanent infrastructure that gave that assurance that it’s OK to be a creative producer in this country, to see us as a culture and as a community treat our creative class as a key anchor and a key attribute, with policy directed at making livelihood more sustainable.”

And it has not been an easy time for artists in the past few years.