The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 404

05 Ambles (Times Alanine Battle for the Masterpieces The Armand Hammer-County Museum Deal: A Saga of Art, Power and Big Misunderstandings BY ROBERT A. JONES ARMAND HAMMER RULES the Oc- ees of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a cidental Petroleum Corp. from position that makes him responsible for attracting the 16th floor of the Oxy building money and new art to a museum that needs both, in Westwood. On this same floor, Belin and Hammer had known each other for all along the quiet hallways, the some time, but the relationship was not exactly a Armand Hammer art collection friendship. Rather, it was the peculiar bond that hangs from the walls.

A Rembrandt here, a Re- seems to exist only in the art world. Belin, a noir there, a Titian, three Van Goghs and, as they downtown trial attorney, wanted Hammer's paint-say, much more. The paintings, in a literal sense, ings for the County Museum. So he and his surround the 90-year-old man who owns them, predecessors had courted Hammer for more than Anytime he wants, he can stick his head out the 15 years, holding formal dinners in his honor at the door of his office and see them, lining the corri- museum, seeking his counsel, naming him to their dors of Oxy's executive suite. board.

Hammer had responded favorably, making Last July, Hammer invited a man named Dan- donations of several major paintings and $3 million iel Belin to share lunch with him on the 16th floor, in cash. Most important, he had promised that the Daniel Belin is not a household name in Los whole collection would eventually follow. Angeles. Yet over the last decade, with a kind of As he drove to the lunch, Belin remembers, he gracious determination, he has become one of the sensed that the long courtship was about to pay most influential persons in the Los Angeles art off. Hammer, after all, was then 89 years old and world.

He is now president of the board of trust- had already signed a non-binding agreement with On Jan. 21, 1988, industrialist Armand Hammer abruptly and surprisingly announced that he would build his own museum to house his art collection rather than donate it to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as he had promised to do for years. This story is a re-creation of the events that led up to that action. Times Staff Writer Robert A.Jones based the account on interviews with the principal players in the story, as well as numerous art experts and other sources. 8 LOS ANGELES TIMES MAGAZINE, MAY 22, 1988 John Bryson Sygma.