Colin Laverty

Works have been loaned on request to overseas exhibitions in 15 different countries. Overall 167 works by 57 different Indigenous artists and 10 different non-Indigenous artists have been lent to exhibitions of both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australian art in St Petersburg, Russia; Basel, Switzerland; Hannover, Düsseldorf, Herford and Cologne, Germany; Oslo, Norway; London, England; Marseilles, France; Odense and Humlebaek, Denmark; Washington D.C. and New Hampshire, U.S.A.; Dunedin, Christchurch and New Plymouth, New Zealand; Osaka and Tokyo, Japan; and Ghent, Belgium. In 2011, five 1971–72 Papunya boards were lent to the National Gallery of Victoria for the exhibition Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art, and these paintings are currently on loan at Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.

Beyond Sacred: Recent painting from Australia’s remote Aboriginal communities, a book compiled by Colin Laverty and designed by Jane Kleimeyer was published in May 2008. It featured 280 paintings by 141 Indigenous artists from more than 20 different communities. A second edition of this award-winning book was published in 2011, after the first edition had sold out.

They have been financial supporters and members of the Foundation of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, for many years and in 2006 were awarded Life Membership "in recognition of their outstanding contribution to the Museum’s development". They are also members of the Contemporary Collection Benefactors groups at the Art Gallery of NSW and the Art Gallery of South Australia, the Aboriginal Collection Benefactors at the Art Gallery of NSW and the Friends of Indigenous art at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Laverty actively promoted Australian art overseas and has spoken by invitation about Australian art, especially Aboriginal art, at the Chicago Arts Club – a leading Arts Institution and in June 2006 gave a keynote presentation at the opening of an exhibition of works by Australian Women Aboriginal Painters in Washington D.C. He engaged in discussions with Gallery Directors in both Europe and the U.S.A. about the presentation of contemporary Aboriginal art.

Colin and Elizabeth were supporters of the Swimming Pool Appeal auction held in 2005 at the Art Gallery of NSW to raise money for pools at Maningrida and Kintore (Walungurru). Approximately $850,000 was raised for this cause, as pool use has been convincingly associated with improved health and education in Aboriginal children. The Lavertys were donors of artwork for auction at both the Western Desert Dialysis Appeal and at the more recent Swimming Pool Appeal.

Laverty wrote, upon invitation, an article on collecting Australian Aboriginal art for the November 2003 issue of the prestigious magazine Arts of Asia, produced in Hong Kong. The rest of this issue of the magazine was devoted to Australian public museums' collections of Asian art. This was an opportunity to promote Australian Aboriginal art widely as the magazine has a substantial worldwide circulation. The article, titled 'Diversity and Strength - Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art: A Private Collection' surveyed the long term history and the recent development and success of contemporary Aboriginal art. It discussed the major art producing communities and illustrated the work of 23 of the best known artists.

Laverty retired from practising medicine in the mid-2001 and with his wife Elizabeth managed their contemporary art collection, one of Australia’s best known. From their collection, works are regularly lent to the Australian national and state art galleries. In particular, Aboriginal works are regularly sought for exhibition by prestigious International art museums. During his lifetime Laverty authored a book and published a number of articles on Australian Art.

Over decades Colin & Elizabeth Laverty have been major art collectors and supporters of young, mid-career and established Australian artists, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. The Lavertys have been substantial donors of artworks under the Cultural Gifts Program. Since 2000 131 paintings have been donated to the Newcastle, Geelong, Benalla and Gold Coast regional galleries, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of NSW and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney. 53 of these have been works by 41 different Indigenous artists and 78 have been by 35 different non-Indigenous artists.

Works from the Laverty Collection by the Aboriginal artists Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri and John Mawurndjul were shown in the 2000 Sydney Biennale, and a painting by Dorothy Napangardi in the 2012 Sydney Biennale. Paintings by Michael Harrison and Michael Stevenson were included in the 2004 Sydney Biennale, and a painting by Richard Larter was included in the 2008 Sydney Biennale.

Dr Laverty has been a staunch supporter of charitable causes associated with Indigenous art. He was a Committee member of the very successful Western Desert Dialysis Appeal held in 2000 in conjunction with auctioneers Sotheby’s Australia at the Art Gallery of NSW. The more than one million dollars raised at this auction has enabled renal dialysis to occur at very remote Kintore (Walungurru) in the Western desert in the south of the Northern Territory. The money raised also supports social workers, interpreters and health care liaison staff both in remote communities and in association with the renal unit in Alice Springs.

In August 1998, his practice was sold to Health Care of Australia (HCoA). Laverty was initially Medical Director of "Mayne Health – Laverty Pathology" in New South Wales. The practice was renamed "Symbion Laverty Pathology" and subsequently onsold to Primary Health Care, a very large, statewide, general pathology practice which still bears Dr Laverty's name.

From 20 June - 23 August 1998, selected works from the Laverty Collection were exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney at the request of the then co-directors Bernice Murphy and Leon Paroissien. This exhibition titled 'The Laverty Collection', curated by Sue Cramer, had an associated program of seminars and public education activities in which Dr Laverty participated. Paintings, sculptures, carvings and ceramics by 12 non-Indigenous artists and 19 Indigenous artists were exhibited.

In 1996 the Laverty Collection was highlighted in an article in Art and Australia. This article written by Anne Loxley appeared in a special issue of Art and Australia devoted to the art of collecting.

In 1982, he founded Dr Colin Laverty and Associates, a private pathology practice which provided specialised services in gynaecological cytology and histopathology. Approximately 200,000 Pap smears were processed annually.

In 1980 he authored a volume entitled Australian Colonial Sporting Painters: Frederick Woodhouse and Sons, about the Woodhouse family of animal and sporting artists active in Australia in the second half of the 19th century. In 1983/84 Laverty conceived, curated and wrote the catalogue for a touring exhibition of the work of 21 artists active in this field of animal and sporting painting in colonial times in Australia. Titled 'Pastures and Pastimes' this was presented by the Victorian Ministry for the Arts and shown at the Victorian Artists Society Gallery, Melbourne; the Geelong Art Gallery and the S.H. Ervin National Trust Gallery, Sydney. He was also a contributor of biographical details on the colonial artists Thomas Balcombe, Joseph Fowles, S S Knights, Thomas Lyttleton, Edward Winstanley and Frederick Woodhouse to the Dictionary of Australian Artists, edited by Professor Joan Kerr and published by Oxford University Press in 1992. These artists were principally involved, but not exclusively, with sporting and animal painting.

A researcher was employed and an electron microscopic technique was then devised which confirmed the suspicion that human papillomavirus (HPV) particles were present in these abnormal cells, in both cytologic and histologic preparations (Pap smears and cervical biopsies). In 1978, Dr Laverty was the first in the world to publish this finding.

Recognition of the frequent and close association of these noncondylomatous HPV-induced changes with high grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) - which was and is accepted as preceding life-threatening invasive cancer - led Dr Laverty to also suggest in 1978 the investigation of the possible role of HPV in genital tract carcinogenesis.

In the mid-1970s, while working as a Specialist Gynaecological Pathologist at King George V Hospital in Sydney, Dr Laverty developed a special interest in the recognition in the Papanicolaou smear of various female genital tract infections, in particular those due to agents difficult or impossible to culture. In the early 1970s it was thought that genital tract warts or condylomas were quite uncommon, usually vulval and merely sometimes cosmetically distressing lesions.

Laverty recognised that cellular abnormalities known as koilocytosis and koilocytotic or "warty" atypia (first reported in the 1950s by Koss and associated with genital warts) were much more common in Pap smears than generally realised and that, surprisingly, in the great majority of cases clinical warts or condylomas were absent, even on careful clinical examination of the entire female genital tract. This raised the possibility that genital infections due to wart or papilloma virus were much commoner than previously thought, frequently cervical in location and very uncommonly of recognisable warty contour or configuration.

Laverty was born in Sydney, New South Wales, the son of medical practitioners Colin (Tas) Laverty and Beryl Laverty. He attended Newington College (1949-1953) and then the University of Sydney. He had the qualifications MB, BS; BSc (Med); DCP (Syd); FRCPA; Dip.Cytopath (FRCPA). He graduated BSc(Med) with honours in 1959, Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery in 1962 and Diploma in Clinical Pathology in 1969 and subsequently obtained by examination Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia and a Diploma in Cytology from the same college. While at Sydney University he was awarded a Blue for Rowing.

Colin Robert Andrew Laverty (26 May 1937 – 9 February 2013) was an Australian medical practitioner and was the first to confirm (using electronmicroscopy) that the human papillomavirus was much more common in the cervix than previously thought and in 1978 he suggested that this virus be considered as possibly involved in the causation of cervical cancer. He was also a prolific art collector.