Art: The Guggenheim’s Choice

After six months of searching, Manhattan’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum picked a director to succeed James Johnson Sweeney, who resigned partly because he thought that Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiraling building was more of a monument to Wright than a museum. The choice: Thomas Messer, 40, who since 1956 has headed the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Boston.

The son of a Czech art scholar, Messer has at one time or another been a student of chemistry, a sergeant with the U.S. intelligence, a stockbroker. It was not until 1947 that he started his formal study of art at the Sorbonne. Later he took his M.A. at Harvard. He headed the tiny Roswell (N. Mex.) Museum, was director of the American Federation of Arts before Boston claimed him.

His record aside, the Guggenheim has reason to feel relaxed about its choice. What does Messer think of the spiraling Wright building? “Magnificent,” he says.