After Boston businessman Rodger Dashow bought an African ritual artifact in France many years ago, he took note of something strange. A person who handled the object broke his leg. Later another person touched it -- and soon broke a leg. Then another person .... "It was a real weird piece," Dashow says by phone from his Boston home. "It wasn't my favorite. Everyone who touched it broke a leg. This was six people."
Was Dashow freaked out?
"No," he says. "It was benign towards me."
Besides, Dashow says, "because I'm a callous, hard guy," his 21st-century, rational American mind doesn't put stock in the powers that tribal cultures claim reside in their ritual artifacts.
Good thing, too, given that Dashow owns what he matter-of-factly calls "the largest collection in the world of tribal art from Indonesia" (plus artifacts from other cultures). During his Indiana Jones-ish travels around the world, Dashow has collected shaman totems, masks, knives, shields, pig sticks, power sticks, blow guns, swords and various ritual objects.
Some of his artifacts will be featured in "Tribal," a dual exhibition that opened Aug. 28 at the Ormond Memorial Art Museum & Gardens.
The exhibition, which runs through Oct. 4, will feature "The Art of the Head Hunters of Borneo" from Dashow's private collection, and the Native American and tribal-inspired art of Sarasota resident Anita Wexler.
Dashow, whose wife, Ann Lenssen Dashow, is from Flagler Beach, began collecting art from the tribal cultures of the South and Northwest Pacific in the 1980s, when he was a 40-something, successful real estate developer. The inspiration came during a trip to South America, where he met a man who had tattoos from the Dayak people of Borneo -- whose culture included the practice of head hunting as late as the mid-20th century.
The tattooed man "gave me two names and I went to Sarawak (in Borneo) and started going up rivers with Chinese guides and living in long houses with these guys," Dashow says. "They had nothing better to do than have fun with me. It's not like there's any industry going on. It's not like they go into an office.
"I had a cassette player -- I'd play our music for them. They would do ceremonies. I would bring cigarettes and we'd drink brandy and various hooch they had. I did this probably 25 times."
And so Dashow began collecting, but "not for ethnographic reasons," he says. "I collect for aesthetic reasons. I'm not a sociologist or an anthropologist.
"I have masks that are carved for tourists, very few. I have masks that are carved for ceremonies. I have masks that are carved to ward off evil. Masks are used for many things. Some of the masks have soul. You look at the mask and you know -- it gets inside of you. It's the carver's genius. There's a transformation that happens to both the viewer and the masker."
Though Dashow disavows any role as an anthropologist, he's collected knowledge of those tribal cultures while collecting their artifacts.
"I don't collect remotely," says Dashow, who, with his wife, splits time between homes in Boston and Bali. "I've lived in all these cultures. Do I understand them completely? No. But when you live in places and you're curious, you accumulate knowledge." Dashow's knowledge would make many an ivory-tower academic cower.
Ask him about pieces in his collection, and he'll detail the Dayaks' use of "medicine figures, charms. If you're sick, you go to a shaman and he craves this little figure. Then you carve off a little piece of it and put it in your tea and that gets you better. I have about 500 of them."
Talk of that (alleged) leg-breaking African artifact leads to talk of a statue Dashow acquired from the Batak people of Sumatra -- an artifact that has "a grin like a person who you don't know if they're laughing at you or they're ready to bite your head off.
"The Batak people are one of the meanest tribes. If you crossed the line in Batak, the community would sit around a fire and you'd be brought up for trial. If you were guilty, they would eat you alive. Cheeks would be cut off, lips cut off and roasted on the fire. You'd live for hours."
Dashow last visited the Dayak people of Borneo about a dozen years ago. Much of the culture that created the art, artifacts and ritual objects in his collection has since vanished -- obliterated by progress.
"From what I understand, the (traditional Dayak) society is completely gone," he says. "Is there an 'auld lang syne'? The answer is yes. But do we have a right to keep people in a bottle as sociological captives. The answer is no ... Yes, they want cell phones. They want the same things as everyone else. They're not into a traditional life anymore than you are into a traditional life. "I love to be the first footprint, but you sort of know at that time that you are the first nail in the coffin."
If You Go
WHAT: "Tribal," an exhibition featuring "The Art of the Head Hunters of Borneo" from the collection of Rodger Dashow, and the Native American art of Anita Wexler
WHERE: Ormond Memorial Art Museum & Gardens, 78 E. Granada Blvd., Ormond Beach
WHEN: Through Oct. 4. Museum hours -- 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Closed on major holidays.
ADMISSION: $2 donation requested. Free for museum members, children and seniors 60 and older.
INFORMATION: 386-676-3347 or ormondartmuseum.org
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