IT WAS at a formal dinner in Canberra two years ago that Betty Churcher first knew for sure that her dream for Australia to have a Chinese art gallery was going to be realised. The director of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra had met Hong Kong's most famous art collector Tsui Tsin-tong (T.T. Tsui), on several occasions in the past, but nothing had prepared her for his surprise. He suddenly stood up and said: 'I'm going to give you this,' and produced a rare terracotta horse, dating from the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD), Churcher recalled. This was not just any piece from Tsui's extensive collection, she said. Before it was given to Australia, the 84cm-high horse was an important centrepiece in his private museum in the Old Bank of China building. Only three such horses are recorded to be in existence today, and none is now in private hands. This is the first of several gifts that Tsui will make to the gallery, which is scheduled to open next year, said Churcher, who stopped off in Hong Kong on her way to Beijing to discuss the chances of China lending one or more of its famed Xian terracotta warriors for the gallery opening. Terracotta warriors have never been loaned outside China on an individual basis, although Churcher has already set a precedent for borrowing Chinese art works, with an agreement with the Shanghai Museum for loans of up to two years. 'I'm hoping to give audiences in Australia some notion of the complexities of Chinese culture.' The plans started when Churcher arrived to head up a National Gallery that had rather lost track of its identity. 'It is sometimes tempting to forget that the primary objective is promoting art,' she said, diplomatically. Her first target for change was the first room in the gallery, which had an extraordinary pot pourri of styles. A Tiepolo painting juxtaposed with a Rubens work, all jammed in the same space as a rare Indian Vishnu statue. Excusable placing perhaps for a stately home, but not for a National Gallery. And even when she had separated some of the work into more user-friendly categories, it was clear that a gallery expansion was needed. 'To put the whole of an Asian collection in one room is like mixing British art with Italian art with Dutch art from all centuries, and believing that is representative of European culture.' Art funding is always tough to find, but this was the Paul Keating 90s. Asian was beautiful, European was on the way out, and what more natural way for Australia's museums to express the new direction of the country's trade policies, and also of its growing Asian population. In the landmark 1994 cultural statement, titled Creative Nation, the Government pledged A$5 million (HK$28.5 million) from state funds to pay for a new wing of the gallery. This gave Churcher the go-ahead to dedicate an entire floor to Asian art, and, most importantly, the chance to provide Australia with its first nationally-owned Chinese art gallery. According to Kevin Munn, the National Gallery of Australia Foundation executive director, although this was to be a Chinese gallery in a Western-style museum, there was a major difference. 'In Australia, no longer are people coming in [to the galleries] with a purely Western cultural baggage. The population is no longer homogeneous, and there are huge demands that some of the items are not from Europe but are from Asia, where the museum visitors have also come from.' This is treating Chinese art not as exotica, but as mainstream, he said. This view of a global art heritage was also reflected in Churcher's attitude to Aboriginal art: she pulled the paintings out of the dusty ethnographic rooms of 'curiosities' and put them into that first room of the National Gallery, where all visitors would see them. 'I wanted to say this is something exciting and important,' she said. Churcher had never planned to be an art administrator; indeed, her first love was painting, which had taken her to study at the Royal Academy of Art in London. 'And then I married a man from the Slade.' A break with normal practice, as the two art schools are arch rivals. 'A Romeo and Juliet story,' Churcher joked. The two intended to stay in London and work, but a short trip back to Australia became a long trip and then they had children and decided to stay. After several attempts to juggle her family and her art, Churcher gave up her painting. 'I was a 50s housewife; and there was no expectation that husbands should play a part in the home.' But the interest remained, and many years later, with the children grown up, she returned to London, this time to study for a postgraduate qualification in art history and theory. 'I wanted to get officially qualified; I didn't want to feel like a fraud.' And then she moved quickly. In the past 10 years she was appointed Dean of the School of Art and Design in Melbourne, then moved to head the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth, and now to the National Gallery. 'The grand finale!' she said. But not quite, perhaps. According to Australian newspapers, some insiders have even tipped Churcher as the next governor general - which would make her the first woman to take up that position. 'It's a very outside chance. But if I should be offered it I would take it only if I could see it as a chance to be a kind of cultural ambassador for Australia. I'd want to show another side of the country from the outback or the standing around drinking beers at a barbecue. It's our own fault if we're almost always just seen abroad like that. 'But there's another, more cultured side to Australia. That aspect of the position - to show that, in the way that Mary Robinson [president of Ireland] has shown that side of Ireland - is the only thing that would tempt me.'