What do you do if you have 300 works by artists at the forefront of the contemporary art world?
If you're Melbourne property mogul Michael Buxton, you build a gallery and hand over your $10 million collection.
"My life has always been about taking advice, so we had curators who would meet every quarter and they would tell us who were the best six artists at that time," he said.
"So we took their advice and then you see the work and you love it."
Mr Buxton donated the art to the University of Melbourne, which named its newest art gallery Buxton Contemporary.
All up, Mr Buxton contributed more than $26 million for the project, including money to build Buxton Cotemporary — which features five galleries and a teaching space — and fund its operations for 20 years.
The investment has been a lifeline for artists like Nicholas Mangan whose sculpture made of banksia nuts, The Mutant Message, is about the clash between violent settler culture and Indigenous culture.
"To see this work out of its crate for the first time in a long time, and seeing it amongst the art of the collection, is pretty special," he said.
"You don't go into a body of work thinking about where it might end up. But in this case I was lucky someone appreciated it."
Mr Buxton said he grew up appreciating Australian artists like Sydney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and Albert Tucker.
But after seeing an exhibition of art belonging to benefactors Loti and Victor Smorgon he was inspired.
"We were travelling the world and I had the inspiration that contemporary art was something that was very exciting," he said.
"And one of the things that drove me to that was Loti and Victor Smorgon had collected contemporary Australian art from 1976 to 1990 and I saw that exhibition, and I thought 'this is where I am'.
"The art world has changed very substantially as you can see around here. There's lots of different media.
"One of our policies was to collect in-depth, because if you are going to have a major collection for a museum you want to have in-depth over a period of time."
His collection, established in 1995, was initially focused on creating a museum-quality art collection of six Australian artists. Since then, it has grown to include work by 58 artists.
Artist Emily Floyd said it was very emotional to see her work about Australian feminism, Temple of the Female Eunuch, on display.
"I see a year of my life," she said.
"The work had been offered to him for many years, but it took some time for him to be convinced.
"To see Michael entrusted with that work and keeping it safe and cared for is an incredible gift."
The Buxton Contemporary opens this weekend at Melbourne University's VCA campus.
