The leaks are just one of the many issues with the gallery's heritage-listed building, issues which have been growing as the institution's budget - and ability to address the problems - have been chipped away by  government budget cuts.

The home of the country's national art collection is shortly to get a new director, when Nick Mitzevich takes up his post on July 2, and Ryan Stokes was announced as the new chair of the board on Friday.

But on the same day, outgoing director Gerard Vaughan made a heartfelt plea to a federal inquiry into Canberra's museums and galleries for the government to ease the long-maligned efficiency dividend on smaller government agencies.

It's a long-running issue that has plagued the gallery for the past decade.

In a submission to the government in May, Dr Vaughan said government funding at $47 million a year was unchanged since 2007.

"The implications of this statement are obvious, and do not need to be articulated," Dr Vaughan wrote.

"Funding reductions have put the core purposes of the NGA at risk, with questions around financial sustainability, caring for the collection and the planning of our loans programs under constant review."

The budget problems have hit the gallery's ability to stand out as the country's premier arts institution; Dr Vaughan told the gallery's governing council in a private brief in February that the gallery had not been able to buy "exceptional Australian and international masterpieces" for many years.

Instead, money had been transferred from the acquisition and development budget to other areas of spending.

The institution's former head of Australian art, Anna Gray, who retired in 2016, said the gallery had relied heavily on private donations when purchasing art, rather than drawing wholly on its acquisition budget.

"People believe that because, initially, the NGA was incredibly well-funded that that is still the case," she said.

"But there have been what I call 'inefficiency dividends' for years and years and years. They make it much harder for the institution to run.

"The national government which funds Canberra is the meanest of all governments."

The gallery itself would not answer when asked when it had last bought an "exceptional masterpiece".

Senior art critic for Fairfax Media, Sasha Grishin, who has a long association with the gallery, said the art market was changing alongside the institution’s shrinking budget, increasing how much funding was required just to keep up.

“The price has gone up quite dramatically for individual items, and I don't think the budget has grown so dramatically,” he said.

“I think that's one of the difficulties, that we're simply not in the market to buy a $3 million Emily Kngwarreye should it come on the market. There are other people with deeper pockets.”

According to Professor Grishin, Canberra's national institutions need to work together in order to both build a national collection and lobby government.

"The National Library, the War Memorial, the National Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Archives - all of these are just basically part of the national collection. In some ways, I think Canberra needs to develop a unified voice.

"I think the whole thing has to be rethought because the funds are not going to get much better. There'll be seepage, but there's not going to be a tsunami of money even if there's a change of government.”

But many of the gallery's current woes stem from its ageing building, where the storage facilities cannot properly house the many donated works.

According to an audit report released last week, a 2015 review of the gallery's assets found that its fire, environmental control, security and electrical systems were variously at the end of their life, no longer supported by industry, at risk of failure or non-compliant.

The gallery confirmed this week that its fire safety evaluation had deemed the building safe to operate, and certified as a public building.

Another review last year found that the gallery needed to spend $46.7 million on repairs, of which $26.5 million "must be undertaken at the earliest possible opportunity due to the consequences of what might occur in the event of a failure".

The government pledged $16.6 million to address building issues in last month's budget and a $4.9 million grant from the Department of Communication and Arts will also go towards repairs and capital works.

"A fire compliance audit is currently underway and major upgrades of all systems will roll out shortly thanks to the extraordinary government grant," assistant director Adam Worrall said.

The audit found the gallery had limited capacity to deal with the issues, due to its "current financial management practices". It also reported issues with cash flow and labelled its financial position "high risk".

In the initial reaction to the report, Mr Worrall downplayed the description of solvency as a "major risk" by the gallery's council in February, saying this was part of responsible forward planning by any institution of its kind.

Regarding funding cuts to the gallery, a spokesman for federal arts minister Mitch Fifield said the government had given more funding to the arts than the previous government.

"The government has a responsibility to deliver a sustainable budget, and to reduce the debt that future generations would have to repay," he said.

"For this reason, the Coalition Government has sought savings across most portfolios, including the Arts."