Specialties
Tambaran is one of New York City's most respected Tribal Art galleries specializing in exceptionally beautiful museum quality pieces.
History
Established in 1979.
Founded in 1979 by Maureen Zarember, the gallery offers an unrivaled expertise in African, Oceanic and North-West Coast American art to private collectors and museums all over the world.
Zarember's eye for authenticity, condition and aesthetic are well established in the tribal art market where she has been helping clients build collections for over thirty years. With a gallery open to the public, she also welcomes young collectors, first time buyers and students.
Tambaran's objects have been exhibited and sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Linden Museum in Stuttgart Germany, the Royal Academy of Arts London, the Royal Academy of Arts Berlin, the Museum of African Art, Smith College Museum of Art, the Heye Foundation of Art, the Minjie Museum in California, the Detroit Institute Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Neuberger Museum of Art, the National Gallery in Canberra Australia, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art..
Meet the Business Owner: Maureen Z.
Australian-born Maureen Zarember, the owner and founder of Tambaran Gallery, became fascinated with tribal art during school visits to the Museum Victoria in Melbourne. She gathered feathers, stones, shells, and other found materials and turned them into "assemblages." In 1960 she moved to Manhattan to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology, but on frequent trips home, she took advantage of layovers in Fiji and New Zealand to visit local stores and museums that featured tribal art. Soon she dropped out of the fashion world.
"By the seventies, my passion for tribal art was coalescing," she explains. A visit to Papua, New Guinea, in 1973 was the turning point: She was refused entry to House Tambaran, a spirit house that stores Tambaran masks and ceremonial objects, because only men could view these sacred objects. "Some day I'll have my own House Tambaran," she vowed.