Finding 24: Dear Mr. Messer

“As you have experienced yourself, it is a curious sensation to address someone by one’s own name, especially in an instance where this is not to be taken for granted and where everything but the middle initial matches.” This statement by Guggenheim Director Thomas Messer was made in response to a letter he received in 1970 inquiring if he might be a relative of another Thomas Messer. This letter in 1970 was one of two letters Messer received from others with the same name. In 1962 a nine year old Thomas Messer, who shared the middle initial M., wrote to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum with a similar inquiry. The letter provides some insight into Messer’s ancestry and family history.
  
—Peter Asch, archives assistant