Elizabeth Laverty didn’t just collect art. She made a world around it

Not many of us have a Frederick McCubbin on the wall growing up, let alone more than one, but a young Elizabeth Laverty did. That exposure, thanks to her grandfather’s interest in painting, imbued a lifelong love of art, which led to a passion for collecting and for supporting artists.

The Melbourne-based philanthropist and art collector, who with her late husband Colin Laverty amassed an extraordinary collection and gave generously to public institutions, died in September aged 88. Her life was celebrated in a service in Melbourne on Tuesday.

Wesley Enoch, chair of the Australia Council, was among those paying tribute. The two became friends after meeting when he was the freshly appointed director of the Sydney Festival.

“The room seemed already alive with the things Liz loved – people, ideas, objects, stories, a slightly glorious sense that life ought to be looked at closely, examined with an open heart and keen eye. Liz did not merely collect art or attend the world of art. She made a world around it. She understood that art was never just a thing on a wall. It was a way of gathering people, of paying attention, of making conversation more interesting and life more expansive.”

About five years go, Enoch said, the two began to speak twice a day. “Those calls were not grand occasions. That is why they meant so much. Friendship is often made not in the big declarations but in the ordinary repetition of care: how are you today; what did you see; who have you spoken to; what are you having for dinner; have you had a good day?” he said. “Wherever Liz was, those calls made a kind of shared geography between us … it was the thing we did to connect. We were in each other’s daily life.”

Portraits of Elizabeth (who was also known as Liz and Lizzie) by Richard Lewer were finalists in the Archibald Prize four times.

Her husband, Dr Colin Laverty OAM, a pathologist by profession, died in 2013. He was best known for his research into the human papillomavirus, which led to the development of vaccines for cervical cancer.

For decades the Lavertys shared a deep and abiding love of art, visiting galleries, meeting artists and, from the late 1980s, travelling to Indigenous art centres around the country.

Speaking to this masthead in 2013, Elizabeth remembered the excitement of buying their first painting together – a much-treasured Tony Tuckson – in 1984 for about $7000.

Part of the Laverty collection was sold in 2013, an impressive 266 works then valued at $4 million to $6 million. Works by Peter Booth, Emily Kngwarreye, Ken Whisson, William Robinson, Rosalie Gascoigne, Richard Larter, Louise Hearman, Robert Klippel and Boxer Milner Tjampitjin were featured.

“We love all our paintings. We collected from the heart, but there’s just so much work and so much of it in storage,” Elizabeth told The Australian Financial Review in 2012. “Some things don’t go up on the walls for years. It’s time to set them free.”

The Laverty Collection was one of the largest and most diverse collections of contemporary Australian art, according to Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, which showed the collection in 1998.

As well as lifting the profile of contemporary Aboriginal art, the couple raised money for kidney dialysis for Kintore (Walungurru in Pintupi language) in the Western Desert and the Swimming Pool Appeal project that funded pools in Kintore and at Maningrida in Arnhem Land, according to Candice Bruce.

They were also early supporters of the Australian pavilion at the Venice Biennale and encouraged support for the event among other collectors.

Elizabeth is survived by her daughter, Jane Kleimeyer, and her stepchildren Georgina Laverty-Bill and Sam Laverty.

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