Debate Over Getty Center

I keep reading many, many wonderful articles that fawn over the Getty Center. I’m in favor of L.A. having a great museum, but I’m shocked that nobody mentions the place the Getty is situated: the Santa Monica Mountains. Anybody who has walked the canyons and fire roads that surround the Getty knows that this huge, natural area defines L.A. far more than any museum ever could--and that the Getty, lovely and important as it is, appears to be little more than a brooding Taj Mahal.

I’d bet that many of the thousands of hikers, mountain bikers and horseback riders who use the trails near the Getty are wondering why the darn thing had to be such a behemoth. Why not a museum that sits low, slung into the hills and integrates with them? Even better, why not a museum somewhere else, where natural space didn’t have to be violated?

DAN KOEPPEL

Santa Monica

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Re Nicolai Ouroussoff’s Dec. 1 architecture review of the Getty Center: From what I gather, the Getty Center has taken great pains to make a splendid museum available to everyone in a generous civic gesture. How sad, then, that the reviewer is shaken by the idea that the “masses” might climb the glorious walls and “run amok.” People enjoying the views and the sun while admiring the artworks: Blasphemy!

Art and pleasure were never meant to be so severely divided, Mr. Ouroussoff. Even if we don’t wear our neckties as tight, our giddily unrefined souls are stirred as surely as yours.

LISA HARRIS

Sierra Madre