Australian Stephanie Carlton has been charged with such a responsibility, as a frame conservator with the National Portrait Gallery in London.

"It can be [nerve-wracking]," she said.

The former country girl from Victoria has lived in England since 2003 and is back in Australia to help stage the upcoming Shakespeare to Winehouse exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.

The exhibition is on its third stop - after already being shown last year at the National Museum of Korea and the Fries Museum in the Netherlands. Canberra marks its first trip to the southern hemisphere.

Ms Carlton travelled with the exhibition from the Netherlands to Australia and has spent the last couple of weeks ensuring the works are hung to perfection in the national capital, after they were held in quarantine for a fortnight due to some having timber frames and potentially biosecurity risks.

"Everything we do is to buffer the work from any kind of shock or vibration," she said, of transporting them.

"Everything is individually wrapped in a protective layer and placed in another protective layer which protects it against weather and vibration, basically. To keep it as stable as possible."

The exhibition - full title Shakespeare to Winehouse: Icons from the National Portrait Gallery, London - is just that. More than 80 artworks featuring famous faces from the 16th century to today, from the collection of the Portrait Gallery in London, which is undergoing renovations.

Paintings, photographs, sculptures, works on paper of everyone from Churchill to Bowie, Rubens to Mandela, Audrey Hepburn to Malala Yousafzai.

Works of historical importance, including Sir Anthony van Dyck's last self-portrait, a painting of Queen Elizabeth I created in 1575, and a portrait of William Shakespeare - NPG London's first acquisition - which is the only picture of the Bard believed to have been made from life.

Ms Carlton said after the works were transported, each piece had to be checked to ensure it hadn't been damaged in transit.

"We work with the gallery teams to unpack each object and every inch of it is checked very carefully against photos and written reports and we track every change and hopefully there are none," she said.

"It's just a very careful check to make sure it's the same as when it left."

There are quirks among the artworks. A circa 1640 portrait of The Capel Family has a silver leaf frame, a rarity in an era of gilded gold. An 1834 portrait of the Bronte sisters, thought long lost, was found folded up in a cupboard. The conservators in 1914 when the gallery purchased the portrait decided to leave the folds intact as it was part of the history of the work.

A former assistant at Ballarat Gallery who went on to work for the Royal Collection in England, Ms Carlton says it goes without saying that all that attention to detail pays off when the exhibition is ready to show.

"It looks fabulous, it really does," she said.

"It's been such an amazing experience for me to come home to Australia with it and see it installed here."