tall-poppy syndrome

— He [James Mollison] protects his person ferociously and about the wickedest question one could ask him, worse even than his opinion on ‘Blue Poles’, is where he went to school. Why? He won’t explain that either, offering only a general observation about the length of Memory Lane (“if I went down I’d never emerge”) and an oblique reference to the tall-poppy syndrome afflicting the Australian media. In an interview with art critic Robert Hughes some years ago, Mr Mollison said of the Press: “I suspect that they would like to put me up so that one day I can bring the gallery down and me with it.”