Dr. Art Gallaher Jr.

1925 - 2023

Dr. Art Gallaher, Jr.
March 22, 1925 - August 14, 2023
Lexington, Kentucky - Art Gallaher, Jr., Ph.D., 98, husband of Dixie Clower Gallaher, died peacefully at his home in Lexington, Kentucky on Monday, August 14, 2023. He was Chancellor Emeritus of the Lexington Campus as well as Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Gallaher was born March 22, 1925, in Duncan, Oklahoma, the son of Arthur Edward Gallaher and Mildred Beatrice (Dunaway) Gallaher. He received his education in the Camargo and Anadarko, Oklahoma public schools, at the University of Oklahoma (B.A. 1950, M.A. 1951) in Norman, Oklahoma and at the University of Arizona (Ph.D. 1956), in Tucson, Arizona. During World War II he served as a signalman in the U.S. Coast Guard (1943-1946), chiefly on the Joseph T. Dickman, an amphibious attack transport ship in the Pacific Ocean.
He is survived by Dixie, his wife and partner of seventy-three years, and his children: Erin Brynn Gallaher (Keith E. Mays, Sr.), and Dr. Kell Darren Gallaher (Sarah); six grandchildren: Clare McCabe (JD), Caitlin Pinkney-Atkinson (David), Lindsay Marshall (Courtney Cornelius), Jane Houston Elliott (Paul), Julia Mays (fiancé Jason Minnehan), and Keith (Keifer) Mays, Jr.; and his two great grandchildren, Edith and Cooper McCabe.
Prior to his tenure at the University of Kentucky, Dr. Gallaher taught at the University of Houston (1956-1962), and Rice Institute (1961-1962), in Houston, Texas, and the University of Nebraska (1962-1963) in Lincoln, Nebraska. He came to the University of Kentucky in 1963, and advanced from Associate to Full Professor (1963-1993). He also served as the Acting and Deputy Director of the Center for Developmental Change, Chair of the Department of Anthropology (1970-1972), Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (1972-1980), Vice President for Academic Affairs (1981-1980), and Chancellor (1982-1989). As Chancellor he also taught one or more courses in anthropology.
Beyond his university-affiliated work, Art also taught, consulted, and advised in both the public and private sectors. He worked with the Southern Regional Council during the 1950's in Houston, Texas, taught at Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, and was a Weatherhead Scholar, and consultant, at the School for American Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico (now the School for Advanced Research).
Art's publications include "Plainville, 15 Years Later", Columbia University Press (1961), "Perspectives in Development Change", University Press of Kentucky (1968), and "The Dying Community", with Harlan Padfield, SAR Press (1980), as well as countless articles.
Several impactful programs were implemented at the University of Kentucky while Art was Chancellor. He was particularly proud of the selective admissions policy he championed, which was introduced in 1983. Moreover, as recognized by the University Senate Council in 1989:
"He recognized the need for reform in undergraduate education and appointed and charged the special committee to assess the state of general studies at the University. This led to the development of the University Studies Program, a promising new approach to undergraduate education at the University.
He also recognized the need for retaining and attracting quality faculty, and for stimulating quality research. The University, including the contributions made by the Lexington Campus, was recognized in 1988 by the Carnegie Foundation as a research university of the first class.
While in the office of chancellor, he was accessible to faculty and was a willing listener. He was firmly dedicated to the institution and the fulfillment of its goals. He implemented programs which enhanced the academic life of the University. Above all, he is a most unpretentious person, is gracious, and possesses a keen sense of humor."
As a cultural and applied anthropologist, Art's research interests were many. Translated into application issues they included short-term processes of cultural change; change agentry and intervention models in economic development; complex social organizations, especially bureaucracy and corporate cultures, higher education, and the dissolution of nation-state constructs; and sociocultural integration of communities at risk and those undergoing rapid change. The research populations with whom he worked included the Seminole Freedman in Oklahoma; African Americans in 1950's Houston; and socioeconomically marginal farm populations in the US and western Ireland, where he, Dixie, and their children Brynn and Kell memorably lived together in Corofin, County Clare in 1965 and again in 1971.
Art served on many boards and was honored with professional awards several times during his long career. He was named a University of Arizona Distinguished Centennial Alumnus in 1989; and was the recipient of the Society for Applied Anthropology Sol Tax Award in 2002, and the American Anthropological Association Presidential Award in 1993. He was a former president and Fellow of both the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology; a former president and Honorary Lifetime Board member of the Witter Bynner Poetry Foundation; and an Honorary Fellow of the School for American Research.
A man of remarkable intellectual capacity, great wit and humor, Art was also an unpretentious egalitarian who treated everyone with dignity and respect. His friendships included peasants, farmers and shopkeepers, students and academicians, business leaders and philanthropists, writers, poets and artists, social and political activists, and ambassadors and heads of state. He was as equally comfortable picking up a hitchhiker and spending the day with him as he was sharing dinner with a prime minister. Art was, not surprisingly, a progressive liberal and social justice advocate who supported, among others, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"Although I admire scholarly friends who have stuck with a single subject to the very depths of detailed research, in space, time and interests, I've always been temporarily permanent." Art Gallaher
Art was a terrific raconteur, and writer whose short stories (and world view) were deeply informed by his early years growing up on the plains of Oklahoma. He was a prolific poet as well. He once observed that "poetry has strong magic, able to make people understand parts of their life they can't grasp otherwise." At the time of his death, he had all but completed his memoirs, dedicated to his six grandchildren. The family will complete them on his behalf. He was also an accomplished photographer, loved listening to jazz and had built an extensive jazz collection.
It has been written numerous times that Art's hobby was his family. Certainly, the love affair and friendship he and Dixie shared for over seventy-three years was the foundation upon which their family was built. Together they relished their roles as parents and provided unconditional love and support to two generations of children and grandchildren.
There will be no services. Memorial contributions may be made in Art's name to Bluegrass Care Navigators (formerly Hospice of the Bluegrass), 1733 Harrodsburg Road, Lexington, Kentucky, 40504, or www.bgcarenav.org/give.