CMAG's senior curator of visual arts Deborah Clark, who has curated the exhibition as her final act before leaving the gallery after 10 years, says, "The idea of it is really a showcase of some of the best and brightest" with works both by artists from the Canberra region and art works about the Canberra region.

She decided, in order to be as representative as possible, to include no more than one work by any particular artist except in a few cases where there was a series of works.

The oldest work in the exhibition - and the collection - is Joseph Lycett's hand-coloured aquatint View of Lake George, New South Wales, from the north east, rendered in 1825.

A much more recent piece is the linocut Encounter of 2017 by "the wonderful Dianne Fogwell".

The exhibition showcases some of the very first purchases made for the gallery in 1996, such as Jaishree Srinivasan's ceramic Vanity Box of 1995 as well as objects only recently gifted to the collection such as Frank Hinder's lithograph Office staff, Canberra of 1942. The latter work was gifted through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program by Rex and Caroline Stevenson in 2018.

The single biggest gift was made in 2000: CMAG received the complete collection of workshop proofs - "hundreds", Clark says - when Studio 1 shut down. A corner space has been dedicated to these works.

Another corner has been devoted to what Clark calls the "Menagerie" - animal works. These include the Carcass prints by head of printmedia and drawing at ANU, Alison Alder, and her inspiration, Sidney Nolan. This is also an example of the fact that where possible, Clark has sought to emphasise connections of various kinds.

"Matthew Harding studied under George Ingham, the inaugural head of the wood workshop at ANU - they have the only two art chairs in the collection," she says.

"Robert Boynes was the inaugural head of the painting workshop and Ruth Waller was a lecturer with him and is now head of the workshop "

There are also works by some of Boynes's students including Derek O'Connor and Marie Hagerty.

Shane Breynard has been CMAG's director for almost seven years. He says that glass art is a particular strength in Canberra, with artists and products from the glass workshop attracting national and even international attention.

"A lot of really inspired Australian glass artists come from Canberra."

Some galleries in Sydney and Melbourne have specialised in representing Canberra artists such as Mandy Martin and eX de Medici, indicating the following they have built up, and the quality and diversity of Canberra art has continued to grow.

Breynard says the number of visitors enjoying the gallery - including its off-site programs - has increased markedly during his tenure, from 42,000 visitors six years ago to 218,000 last year. They include both locals and visitors to Canberra - the latter numbers have continued to rise and the gallery's central location in the city has seen it become something of an unofficial tourist bureau, with staff often called on to advise people about what's on in town.

But the growth in patron interest and activity has not been accompanied by commensurate increases in funding or space for CMAG.

"It's an ACT government enterprise as part of the Cultural Facilities Corporation but it's remained relatively static," he says.

The acquisitions budget has been kept for some time at $25,000 a year - the gallery is heavily reliant on artwork donations from artists and financial patrons such as Meredith Hinchliffe and John Hindmarsh - and the on-site storage room is rapidly approaching capacity. Breynard says the gallery is not currently looking to acquire large objects, simply because it doesn't have the space to house them.

Space-making options, he says, include increasing the gallery space where it is by moving the gallery's storage off-site, thus enabling the storeroom to become another display area, and expanding the gallery into surrounding premises presently used for other purposes. However, these are all matters for discussion.

Among the highlights during his tenure, Breynard says one was taking the exhibition Peace, Love and World War: The Denmans, Empire and Australia, 1910-1917 to London last year, where it was shown in the Weston Room at the Maughan Library, King's College, from July 3 to September 25.

"It was opened by Alexander Downer, the Australian High Commissioner to Britain, and had been opened here by Menna Rawlings, the British High Commissioner here."

He says the 2014 exhibition Elioth Gruner: the texture of light, curated by Clark, was the most popular show the gallery has had, and 2015's INK REMIX: Contemporary art from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong curated by Sophie McIntyre enjoyed a multi-city, multi-year Australian tour.

And 2017's Eirene Mort: A livelihood, curated by recently retired senior curator of social history Dale Middleby, had an artistic component but also highlighted the social history aspect of the gallery and its collection, Breynard says.

While the focus of the exhibition, as its title suggests, has been on 20 years of collecting visual art, Breynard says CMAG's "coming of age" 21st-birthday celebration in February 2019 will pay more attention to the gallery's role as a chronicler of social history and its forays into the digital sphere. The Canberra Museum and Gallery has simply done too much in its first two decades for one exhibition to do it justice.