''That was the end of that,'' he says.

But he has been named as the new director of the Australian National University Drill Hall Gallery and ANU Art Collection. He takes over from outgoing director Nancy Sever in January.

''It couldn't have been better,'' Maloon says.

He is no stranger to the Drill Hall Gallery, having curated or co-curated four exhibitions that have been shown there since 1991.

''It's one of the most beautiful gallery spaces in the country with a wonderful design and beautiful harmony in the interior that offsets certain kinds of art well very, for example painting, sculpture and drawing.''

He says the gallery is ''not your typical white box'' and while it might not have the adaptability of such a design, it is ''more of a classic space for things on the wall and things on the floor''.

And, he says, it has played a great role nationally, not just in the ACT, ''in that it's really had a program of very important survey exhibitions by important contemporary artists. It's performed that function impeccably. Most national and state galleries a long time ago really relinquished any strong role in undertaking this kind of survey.''

''It's a very unfortunate thing, this tendency to turn cultural institutions into businesses. I think this is pervasive and its effect is dismal and very impoverishing for us,'' he says.

Previously, he says, profitable exhibitions would finance the ones that didn't make money.

''Now, more and more, everything has to make money.''

He exempts Canberra's galleries from this criticism, saying the ACT ''exists in a bubble'' and that institutions like the National Gallery of Australia and the Drill Hall are doing well in presenting art.

Maloon's first time working with the Drill Hall Gallery was in 1991 with an Allan Mitelman exhibition in conjunction with the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Victoria.

In 1995 he curated From the Empire's End, an exhibition of nine Australian photographers including Bill Henson and Tracey Moffatt with the Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, which toured Spain for a year and then had a two-year tour of regional galleries in NSW and the Drill Hall Gallery.

''The show wouldn't lie down. After the two-year tour there was an application by the Association of Victorian Regional Galleries but I thought enough was enough.''

The Light of Open Spaces (2004), a Virginia Coventry survey exhibition, was his first show curated exclusively for the Drill Hall Gallery and in 2011, with Paul Selwood, he curated Abstraction, also a Drill Hall exclusive, which featured the work of five Australian painters and five sculptors.

''I thought they were beautiful shows and they were very well received,'' he says.

Conventry, he says, was ''a mature artist who … over the past 10 years had produced beautifully distilled, intense work. It was abstract and extraordinarily and energetically beautiful.''

The exhibition was, he says, a way to ''pay tribute to someone who was a very quiet achiever''.

The year before Abstraction he had curated The Path to Abstraction 1867-1917, about the movement's origins and early years, and the Drill Hall show was a survey of Australian painters and sculptors who had worked in abstract art for the past few decades.

''Most group exhibitions bring artists together in an antagonistic relationship. I wanted this to be sociable, where all the works would talk to each other. It was a face-off of incredible individualism and I intended it to be a joyful exhibition.''

At the Art Gallery of NSW, Maloon says, he was dedicated mostly to historical shows - artists whose work he curated included Picasso, Matisse, Monet, and Michelangelo - but he had always been rather drawn to contemporary artists, too.

Asked what his plans for the Drill Hall Gallery are, he says he intends to continue the excellent work done by his predecessors and to maintain the standards they set. The program for the next year or so is already in place and he will start by making the most of it. And he has his own ideas concerning how to go about this.

''I want to make exhibitions more accessible and increase attendance enormously,'' he says.

Part of this will be through increased communication and publicity but he also wants to make the gallery into a social hub for the people of Canberra.

''I want to inaugurate a society of Friends of the Drill Hall and on Friday nights once a month have social occasions that will be very convivial.''

He also wants to draw on the goodwill of the gallery's supporters for help, and not just financially.

''I hope the loyalty of people will mean they give it their protection, their blessing, and a willingness to give it their time and attention.''

Maloon, who says he is ''62 going on 28'', was born in London and studied at the University of London and the University of East Anglia. He emigrated to Australia 32 years ago.

''To be quite honest, Mrs Thatcher had a hand in it. I was teaching at a college and the faculty was cut by 10 per cent a year over the next three years and all parts were going to be affected. It was a good time to jump ship.''

The choice was between Canada and Australia and he plumped for the latter because it had ''palm trees and avocados, highly desirable exotic phenomena.''

Since then he has worked extensively as a writer, researcher, and critic as well curator.

Asked what an art curator's role is, he says, ''You aim to discover what something is about and to fnd a way to bring that out, to make it tangible, sequence the work and organise it in some way so that people coming into the space are taken through a journey.''

The aim, he says, is to give dimension to the work on display and to bring out its latent energy, history and imagery to make them explicit to the viewers, who are having an interactive experience.

''I joke with people that what I do is put spaces between things,'' he says

But, of course, it's more than that: he aims to make the viewer's experience meaningful.