EMAIL TO HERBERT DISTEL

A couple of days ago I received a phone call from a man who was unsure who I was and who was unknown to me – until, after some stalling on my part and hesitant persistency on his, he introduced himself as Herbert Distel, a well-known Swiss artist whom I had met in Hamburg in November 1968 when I was co-curating an exhibition of avant-garde European art and he was one of the artists. He was phoning from his home near Vienna to inform me that his Museum of Drawers (to which I contributed a piece of multi-coloured bread), was in the process of going online and that next year would be its 40th anniversary. The museum contains 500 artworks by 500 artists housed in a cabinet with 20 drawers
divided into small compartments and can be found at www.schubladenmuseum.com.  The site is still under construction, but should be more advanced and may even be complete by the time you see it. This was a welcome call from the past and a contact that I hoped we would maintain, as I told him in my email.