Patrick Corrigan AM (b. 1932), businessman, art collector and arts patron, was born in Hanghow (Hankou) in China. Departing China on the SS Fausang in 1941, the young Corrigan and his mother were captured and interned for four years at Stanley Internment Camp during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. The family arrived in Australia in 1946 after Japan's surrender. Corrigan attended school briefly before leaving at fifteen in 1948 to begin work in the freight department of a Unilever subsidiary company. Five years later he was appointed to the role of general manager at the customs brokers J N Campbell Customs Pty Ltd, Sydney. In 1967 Corrigan established his own transport and logistics company, Corrigan’s Customs Agency Pty Ltd, which had a focus on freight forwarding and clearance. In 1970 he co-founded Express Livestock Pty Ltd which was sold to Mitchell Botts & Co Ltd in 1972. Corrigan remained chairperson for the company for over ten years following the sale, prior to an appointment to Panalpina, a Swiss forwarding and logistics company. In 1988 Corrigan founded Pace Express; the company won both a Governor of Victoria Export Award and Export Council of Australia’s Premier NSW Export Award in 1989. Following the sale of Pace Express in 1994, he joined VIP Airfreight as chairperson. This role was then followed by chairperson roles in Century Freight and UBI Logistics. Corrigan was director and partner of the successful specialist art transportation company Woollahra Art Removals from 1987 to 2002.
An avid collector, Corrigan began to build a significant collection of Australian and international works of art in 1970. He complemented his art collection with a significant library of scholarly Australian art publications, which he sold to James Hardie Industries in 1979. This outstanding collection of publications, now known as The Australian Art Research Collection, was subsequently donated to the State Library of Queensland, forming a core part of the library's collection. He has also donated The Lindsay Collection of Pat Corrigan to the State Library of Queensland; the Patrick Corrigan Collection of Australian Exhibition Catalogues to the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art; and The Patrick Corrigan Collection of Australian Bookplates to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He continues to support the State Library of Queensland with donations to The Australian Library of Art and other collections. Corrigan has, over the span of his philanthropic endeavours, donated over a thousand works of art to regional, state and national arts and cultural institutions and other organisations.
In 2000 Corrigan was named a Member of the Order of Australia for 'service to the visual arts, particularly as a philanthropist to regional galleries and through a grant scheme for artists.' In 2007 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Bond University for his support and patronage of visual arts, in particular First Nations art. Corrigan's philanthropic ventures have been recognised with the Australian Business Arts Foundation's JB Were Philanthropy Leadership award in 2012, the Queensland Government’s Queensland Greats Award in 2014, and by the Gold Coast City Council's highest honour, the Key to the City, in 2015.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist and Anne Grealy 2016
© Gary Grealy
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