While he was at the helm of the National Portrait Gallery, Andrew Sayers was known as the Armani-wearing "radiant host" of stylish opening night parties, his friend Melinda Hinkson said.
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But away from the institution, still "saturated with his presence", he was partial to skateboarding to the home of his friend, and later portrait subject, environmental lawyer Tim Bonyhady, after taking up the pursuit in his 50s.
"They would find him coming up their front step with the board tucked under his arm, then watch him skate off home again in most un-directorial fashion," she said.
It was just one of the stories recalled at Sayers' commemoration concert at the gallery on Sunday which he "curated" for guests before his death on October 11 after being diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer on May 12, 2014.
About 200 friends and former colleagues gathered to celebrate Sayers' life and enjoy music, poetry and artworks specially borrowed from the institutions where he had worked at his request.
Sayers' daughters, Ianthe Mills, and Hanako and Ella Sayers, shared their memories of his life away from his career as a curator, the gallery's inaugural director, at the helm of the National Museum of Australia and as an artist.
The 58-year-old was remembered as a marathon runner, rower, meditator, cook, beloved husband, father and grandfather and a lover of music and poetry.
Long before he went on to head up two of Canberra's national institutions, Sayers' dreamt of being an opera singer, spurred on by a boyhood surrounded by art and music thanks to his graphic artist father, Mills said.
His love of singing would later prompt him to join the Sydney University choir where he met Perry Sperling who he went on to marry 36 years ago.
Mills said the couple spoke over the phone at length every day after Sperling moved to Melbourne for work and Sayers stayed in Canberra for two years while directing the museum.
"I can't imagine either of their personal or professional successes would have been possible without the support of the other," Mills said.
"Mum stopped working the day that Dad was diagnosed with cancer and they spent every day of the next 18 months living life to the fullest."
Hanako Sayers said her father had a "deep curiosity and desire" to always learn and recalled his "unusual crafting" activities including self-taught embroidery.
"[He embroidered] himself a T-shirt with the molecular structure of his primary chemotherapy drug," she said.
"He called it his 'chemo shirt' and he wore it to most of his treatments, much to the curiosity of the oncology nursing staff."
For more than a year after his cancer diagnosis Sayers' body remained as "strong and resilient" as his mind, Hanako Sayers said.
"Dad's years of commitment to fitness through running, and mental focus through mediation came into its own ... [he] described himself as a healthy man with cancer," she said.
Ella Sayers said her father continued to live "with a determined curiosity and vigour" as always.
"Dad used every hour to its fullest, cramming every tidbit, story, brush stroke, cryptic crossword clue, Scrabble word and landscape into his personal library," she said.
