One Man’s Art Is Another’s Assets

Eli Broad doesn’t get it (“Playing Harball,” by Diane Haithman, Oct. 19). The ultimate value of any creative endeavor is to provide artful insight into our world. To not understand the relationship between Frank Gehry and his architecture is to believe that someone other than Richard Serra could have sculpted the piece that Broad took such pains to own.

David L. Gray

Santa Monica

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For some reason we always end up resenting wildly successful entrepreneurs like Eli Broad or the even more visible Bill Gates. While we laud the current corporate executives who are pushing their firms to new heights through downsizing as “captains of industry” and credit them with fueling the current economic boom, we label those who founded the firms in the first place as “robber barons.”

We face two crises in the near future: current computer programs won’t, on Jan. 1, 2000, know what day it is, and the proliferation of cell phones, faxes and pagers will mean area code chaos. These problems will eventually be solved. All it will take is a little effort by someone who isn’t afraid of innovation. That person won’t be one of the executive clones. It will be someone like a Broad or Gates. And how will we reward them? We’ll call them robber barons.

Earl E. Albert

Temple City