TWENTY YEARS AFTER...

April 9, 2004, marks 20 years since the passing of our Beloved Guiding Prophet, Doctor Dahesh.

Today, I logged on the web site of the Dahesh Museum. I looked around for a little bit, and I was very impressed with the branding and corporate culture the museum trustees have seen fit to implement. It's classy and I would even think that the founder himself, Doctor Dahesh, would have been proud.

However, nowhere in the web site was I to find an iota of information about his spiritual Mission. Now, I am not suggesting that the museum should become a storefront for the Daheshist faith. However, what would be the harm in being honest and present the true historical perspective? It is part of the Daheshist core of beliefs to view art (great art) as a spiritual act.

Daheshists consider many artists, musicians, physicists, philosophers, and peace makers (such as Mahatma Gandhi) as prophets to a certain degree. As far as we are concerned, they were inspired to help humanity get closer to God. Daheshism is not just about the miracles of Doctor Dahesh, or his writings, or his art collection, or merely about his personal library. But it encompasses all of these aspects of his personality and humanity. It is by studying all aspects of the man we get a holistic view of the world he hoped to reveal to us.

Dahesh was not a philosopher as the Dahesh Museum claims him to be.

He was a prophet.

He gathered his collection as an act of love and by divine mandate.

He never sold the collection as the popular myth goes.

He willed it to a Devout Daheshist family, whom I have known to give and sacrifice so much.

Why then would they publicly deny the existence of his spiritual mission?

Mario Henri Chakkour, AIA

April 8, 2004