The Hammer Museum

Isn’t it ironic that Armand Hammer withdrew his art collection from the Los Angeles County Art Museum in a move apparently driven by ego, and in so doing set himself for the most unfavorable and ultimately ego-shattering comparisons (“The March to Boutique Museums,” by William Wilson, Jan. 22)?

J. Paul Getty, the world’s richest man, left an endowment of a couple of billion dollars for an art museum to be constructed on 450 acres in Brentwood. Armand Hammer, somewhere in the bottom half of Forbes 400 richest Americans, is renting a corner in Westwood for his collection worth a couple hundred million.

Oh well, at least it will be easy to advise out of town visitors: If you have a few extra days see the Getty, if you have a few minutes after lunch in the Village see the Hammer.

MICHAEL N. BELTRAMO

Los Angeles