An unwritten interview with American rock legend Patti Smith about Jackson Pollock is among the projects that Chris McAuliffe wants to complete when he departs the Ian Potter Museum of Art in February.

McAuliffe, whose connections with the gallery at the University of Melbourne go back to his undergraduate days, has been director there since 2000.

But the year he spent at Harvard University in the US as chair of Australian studies made him realise how much pleasure he took in writing and research.

He says he intends to devote his attention to those "half-finished essays", conference papers and other research projects.

"I need to focus on a little intellectual housekeeping," he says.

McAuliffe is working on a book about Pollock and the influence of his drip paintings on popular music and design: everything from wallpaper, linoleum and record sleeves. Smith, for example, wrote a song titled Blue Poles and named her son Jackson after the artist. "Pollock has this afterlife that the art world does not control," McAuliffe says.

The interesting thing to me is what happens to art when it leaves the art world: Is it trashed or does it take on a new life? It's a question the art world does not often ask."

Another of McAuliffe's possible research projects concerns the brief Australian career of English Pre-Raphaelite sculptor Thomas Woolner.

The Ian Potter Museum of Art was founded in 1972 as the University Art Gallery and this year marked its 40th anniversary.

Among the exhibitions that McAuliffe counts as notable during his term are the inaugural $100,000 Basil Sellers art prize for sport subjects in 2008, and the Blood on the Spinifex show of indigenous art in 2003.

The university will soon begin an international search for McAuliffe's replacement.

He says of his decision to leave: "In the art business you are constantly meeting artists who have made a significant life decision in order to focus on their creative activities. Sooner or later you ask yourself: 'Could I do that?' "