Patrick McCaughey

Patrick McCaughey (born 1942 in Dublin, Ireland) is an Australian art historian and academic.

McCaughey migrated with his family to Melbourne, Australia when he was ten years old.^[1] His secondary education was at Scotch College, Melbourne. He resided at Ormond College, University of Melbourne, where he studied Fine Arts and English Literature.^[2] He became Art Critic for the Melbourne Age in 1966. He was well known for his advocacy of abstract expressionism and of Australian artists, in particular Fred Williams.^[3]

On return to Australia from a year-long Harkness Fellowship in New York, he was appointed as the first professor of Fine Arts at Monash University in 1972.^[2] From 1981 he was the Director of the National Gallery of Victoria.

In 1988 he left Australia for the United States, where he held positions including Director of the Wadsworth Atheneum (1988–96),^[4] the Chair in Australian Studies at Harvard University, and the director of the Yale Center for British Art.^[1][2]

His father was Davis McCaughey. Patrick was married to Winsome McCaughey for a time.^[5]

McCaughey retired in Connecticut with his partner Donna Curran. He continues to write, while his partner runs a restaurant. ^[6]

Bibliography

• The Pyramid in the Waste: The Search for Meaning in Australian Art 1983
• Fred Williams 1927-1982 1987, 1996, 2008
• The Bright Shapes and the True Names: A Memoir 2003
• Voyage and Landfall: The Art of Jan Senbergs 2006
• Strange Country: Why Australian Painting Matters 2014

References