After 20 years as director of the Drill Hall Gallery at the Australian National University, she thought she’d had enough of the art world, and planned to withdraw on a high note.

But she lasted only a year, before realising the art world was exactly where she belonged.

''I love working with talented artists, creative people who make you look at the world with different eyes, and that’s what I miss the most,'' she said.

Around her, works were being hung and signs placed on walls in preparation for the opening of her new eponymous gallery in Kingston, set to open on Wednesday night.

And while it may seem like a strange time to open a commercial gallery in Canberra – a city long considered a tough nut to crack when it comes to buying art – Ms Sever is adamant that her new space is exactly what the city needs.

''We kind of live in a cultural desert – Canberra needs more galleries,'' she said.

''The thing is that it is very localised, and people think that because we have all these artist-run spaces that is enough. But we need everything, we need art from outside, we need international art, we need exchanges, we need artists from here to go somewhere else. That’s what I found as an outsider, having left the gallery last year and at the beginning of this year.''

Beginning with acclaimed Australian artist Tim Johnson, whose show opens on Wednesday, Sever has already lined up a program of monthly exhibitions by contemporary artists.

After 30 years spent in the arts sector, she is ideally placed to fill the gap in the Canberra art market, although she said her focus was not on the commercial aspects of exhibiting art.

''Art is not a luxury,'' she said.

''I want to have exhibitions that are interesting, where people can come and not necessarily feel 'oh I have to buy', but actually find it inspiring… My friends say it’s crazy from the commercial point of view, but I have discussed it with my husband – he said give it a go, be prepared for the worst and hope for the best, that sort of thing.''

Born in Peru, Ms Sever studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and has been married to former Australian diplomat Adrian Sever for 40 years.

When they met, she had a degree in Latin American studies and was more interested in politics, but her father-in-law introduced her to Australian art.

''I always thought it would be a passion, I never saw it as a career until we came back from France to live in Australia and I got the job at the Drill Hall Gallery,'' she said.

In the interim, in the late 1980s, she opened a gallery in Manuka, her last foray into the commercial art world, and ran it for three years before her husband took up a posting in Nepal and the family had to move again.

After another stint in Paris, the family moved back to Canberra and Ms Sever became the founding director of the Drill Hall in 1993.

Back then, she said, the gallery was a shell – a temporary exhibition space for the National Gallery – and the university possessed a large but disorganised art collection.

Overseeing that collection was another part of her job, and under her watch, the collection grew with several major acquisitions.

In 2007, the French government awarded Ms Sever a Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres for services to art in France and Australia.

Tim Johnson: Eye to Eye is showing at the Nancy Sever Gallery, 6 Kennedy Street, Kingston, until July 6.