Mr Morrison will depart from the helm of the gallery next June. 

Over those years he has attracted $400,000 in private and corporate donations for conservation, increased visitation and a “burgeoning” Indigenous art collection.

“You get all kinds of opportunities to do good, you can do good in terms of how the collection presents itself out into the community,” Mr Morrison said. 

“You can do good in terms of your relationship with staff. You can do good for artists working in your community and the larger world.

“The really special thing and a unique thing for a gallery director is you can grow the collection and I look around this gallery and I can see after a space of 13 years the walls are different because I’ve been here.”

Mr Morrison has mostly got the works he wanted – but for two drawings by Austrian-born artist Eugene von Guerard of western Victoria.

But he counts that loss against the wins which have come out of the woodwork. They include a “naive” rendering of Lake Wendouree painted circa 1875 by the artist Thomas Thompson.

The painting had been stowed in an attic in Adelaide with a note that said ‘Lake Wendouree’ for generations until its owner, passing through Ballarat, asked the gallery’s opinion. 

Thompson, who was “by no means” a great Australian artist, had still made an evocative rendering of the lake as it would have been in summer 145 years ago, Mr Morrison said.

“It’s by no means a particularly valuable painting but it literally walked in off the street,” Mr Morrison said.

“You’re immediately placed there so even though that work isn’t technically a marvelous painting it’s still very evocative and that’s something that’s very important for someone who works in collecting is that you have to have an eye that enables you to see the importance of things you might not personally like - and it’s also important to go against trend.”

Mr Morrison also “weathered” a trend away from art galleries, City of Ballarat deputy mayor and Gallery Board of Directors chair Mark Harris said. “We had a period of time where galleries just weren’t in vogue. And as we’ve transitioned through that he’s managed to make art the norm and the place just buzzes. “