Gallery of African Art Appoints New Director

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

GoLocalWorcester Lifestyle Team

Zachariah Combs has become a distinguished local anthropologist.

Gallery of African Art founder Gordon B. Lankton has announced the appointment of Zachariah Combs as Director of the Gallery of African Art. Mr. Combs has had a history with the Gallery since its expansion in 2011, offering tours of the collection, music and drumming lessons and sharing his expertise on the art and culture of Africa.

After completing his major in Anthropology with a minor in African Studies at Connecticut College, Mr. Combs graduated in 1993 and was awarded the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for “college graduates of exceptional promise to engage in a year of independent study and travel abroad . . .” Combs chose to study the “apprenticeship model for African drumming” in Mali, West Africa.

Mr. Combs has been the Director of Crocodile River Music, promoting African and African-influenced music in “concerts, workshops, lecture/demonstrations, residences, and other educational programs, a leading resource for African music and cultural activity in New England.”

Regarding his appointment as Director of the Gallery of African Art, Mr. Combs remarked, “I am excited for the opportunity to lead the Gallery of African Art in creating working partnerships with Massachusetts schools, Clinton businesses and Central Massachusetts community organizations. This fall, we plan to launch both outreach and in-gallery programming that will showcase African art, music and dance.”

To that end, Mr. Combs has acquired a grant from the Sunhill Foundation that will help fund ten school field trips to the Gallery of African Art, and twenty outreach programs in Central Massachusetts schools. A series of educational lectures are also planned for the near future."

About the Gallery of African Art

The Gallery of African Art is a museum display of a unique, private collection representative of various regions, tribes and traditions of the African continent. The collection has been assembled by Massachusetts industrialist and avid art collector Gordon B. Lankton. The Gallery encompasses a diverse collection of more than 600 + African tribal masks, figures, sculpture and artifacts crafted in stone, wood, clay and bronze, spanning 32 tribes, including Dogon, Baule, and Bamana art. Like African art in general, Lankton’s collection emphasizes the human figure, visual abstraction, sculpture and the representative accouterments of ceremonial performance art.