David Broker has plenty to be proud of as he marks the end of 16 years at the helm of one of Canberra's best-loved arts organisations.
As the director of Canberra Contemporary Art Space, he has commissioned, curated or overseen countless exhibitions by local artists, both emerging and established.
He has also overseen the gallery's move from its long-term former home at Gorman House into chic new premises by the lake, a move fraught with uncertainty and false starts, as smoke and then COVID meant the gallery has stayed shut for long periods.
And this week, as he prepares to move back home to Brisbane to reunite with his partner, he passes the baton onto another stalwart of the Canberra arts scene, Janice Falsone.
She's the former director of PhotoAccess, and is returning to the sector after a few years off bringing up her two young children.
An artist herself, she's well-versed in the Canberra arts scene, having worked as well at ANCA Gallery and M16 Artspace.
But as is often the case when leaving a long-term position, there are the achievements, and there are the things left undone.
Broker has long kept a large folder in his office - a cheerful yellow binder - that he liked to call his Kingston File.
In it are all the notes, drawings, minutes and reports about the still non-existent Kingston Arts Precinct collected over the 16 years he's been in Canberra.
Among them is a newspaper article from August, 1999, announcing the precinct was "one step closer".
He can't help wondering whether the contents of the yellow binder represent a huge waste of time.
"I've spent 16 years working on various elements of the Kingston Arts Precinct, from consultants to community consultation, only to end up at a time where I don't know where it's going, and I fear it may be back at square one," he says.
He motions to office and light-filled gallery space around him, with views out to Lake Burley Griffin; the new digs are in a long-time art space, close to the Parliamentary Triangle and likely to be home for years to come.
Which is precisely the point; in an ideal world, CCAS would be preparing to take its place as part of the Kingston Arts Precinct, just down the lakeshore.
Maybe it will happen by the time the current lease runs out. Or maybe not; plans for the precinct have been endlessly delayed over the past two decades by periodic skirmishes over heritage, impassioned community feedback, multiple proposals and an arts community crying out for a sense of cohesion.
The most recent development - the departure from the process of high-profile development company Geocon - has been cause for optimism, a cue for the ACT government to wrest back control of the project and see it through.
That's what Broker likes to think, as he flips wistfully through the yellow binder.
"Our new premises is a great achievement, but two achievements would have been better than one," he says.
"And I think that we have achieved something with Kingston, but it's very hard at the moment to pinpoint or put your finger on what it is."
But in the meantime, there's a handover in train and shows to plan.
Falsone is coming into the job with a keen sense of the kind of challenges - and triumphs - lie ahead.
She arrived in Canberra 10 years ago to take up a position at M16 Artspace, a job Broker himself found for her when she contacted him, as a fellow Brisbanite and her only arts contact in Canberra.
As it happened, it was there she would meet her future husband, Joseph Falsone, then M16's director, and later the director of Gorman and Ainslie Arts Centre.
She says the new role feels right and, in a way, inevitable.
"It feels like a sense of coming home," she says.
"I don't feel nervous coming here. I just actually feel like I have a deep sense of understanding already [and] a deep love of this organisation."
She says she and Broker had been "in each other's orbit" while both in the Brisbane arts scene, where Broker was deputy director at the Institute of Modern Art.
She has stayed connected to the sector thanks to her husband, Joseph Falsone, who has recently resigned from Gorman and Ainslie Art Centre.
It's a sign, once again, of a scene that's dynamic, and always on the move, if not always in a state of flux.
Broker says he's been proud of the calibre of CCAS's exhibitions - often edgy, relevant and speaking to the times in which we're living.
"I've really appreciated working with Canberra's legendary community. I mean, there's a wonderful arts community here, which is not widely acknowledged around the country, but I think it's starting to be," he says.
Falsone, meanwhile, is looking forward to reconnecting and reconstructing an arts community that has been necessarily fragmented and scattered over the last two years.
"I'm not quite sure what it's going to look like yet, but I'm excited to be part of that," she says.
