Despite Snarls and Snarling, Seattle Art Museum Is Called Untarnished : Culture: There have been delays, wrangling and bungling, but most galleries in the new building are expected to be ready for public opening by Dec. 5.

Despite construction delays, wrangling between the prime builder and the architect, and a bungled attempt to install a major sculpture, the new Seattle Art Museum’s luster remains undimmed, its director says.

“I think of the building as Venturi unchained,” Jay Gates said, referring to Robert Venturi, the Philadelphia architect who designed it. “It’s unique among all of his works, not an addition to a building, not a part of a campus.”

Also unchained will be an 18,000-piece collection heavy on sculpture, masks, textiles, clothing and carvings.

When the original art deco museum is refurbished as an Asian art showplace by summer, 1993, as much as 30% of the total collection may be on display, including “literally hundreds of works that no one has seen before,” Gates said.

The collection will include world-class assortments of African, Asian and American Indian artifacts, as well as strong 20th-Century and Pacific Northwest contemporary sections, the museum director said.

A bond issue approved in 1986 provided $29.6 million for the new building, the largest successful public referendum for an art museum in the nation. Another $32.4 million was raised privately.

Gates said the “public opening” for most galleries would be Dec. 5, barring further delays, followed by an “international opening” in late January for two Asian art suites.

Venturi was awarded the $100,000 Pritzker Architecture Prize this year for his leading role in reintroducing decoration and historical elements as alternatives to more austere modern design philosophies like Bauhaus.

The museum plans predate Venturi’s design for the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London, which opened in July. There’s little similarity.

“It’s important to remember that it’s a wing . . . designed as a deferential bow” to the neoclassical Trafalgar Square landmark designed by Robert Wilkins in 1838, Gates said.

The Sainsbury Wing also was “built to show flat objects against walls,” while the Seattle Art Museum displays mostly “have to be seen from different points of view,” he said.

With 155,000 square feet, 100,000 for public displays, it’s “different from any other building we have done,” Venturi said from his office in Philadelphia.

“A characteristic of our work is that most of our works look different. We don’t have one signature vocabulary, as many architects did in the not-so-distant past,” he said.

Six figures that once lined the path to a Ming Dynasty tomb adorn a staircase that rises beside windows and pillars from the terrazzo 1st Avenue lobby to a lesser entrance off 2nd Avenue.

Overhead are Chinese-style arches, gold with red, white and black trim facing from 1st Avenue and red with gold, white and black trim from 2nd Avenue.

“It’s meant to create a sort of esplanade . . . reminiscent of this museum’s origins as a major collection of Oriental art,” Gates said.

The two camels, two lions and larger-than-life warrior and scholar were damaged by acid rain and lichen in half a century outside the Volunteer Park museum. Restoration ranged from grouting old cracks in the camels to removing spray-painted graffiti from the back of the warrior’s right leg.

A hallway from the main lobby leads to a children’s art studio, a board room featuring 18 Mark Tobey paintings that once graced the home of museum founder Richard E. Fuller and a 299-seat auditorium that shares a pair of dressing rooms with a 109-seat lecture hall.

The second floor is largely devoted to galleries for visiting exhibits. The first, a Caribbean art show, is scheduled to open in March.

Permanent galleries are on the third and fourth floors, with administrative and other offices on the fifth and top floor.

Each floor has an east-west hallway with windows at both ends to offer a break from the artificial lighting in the galleries, where light from outside could damage the art, and to avoid disorientation.

“One of the things we have learned is that a visitor walks into a museum, turns around and instantly is lost,” Gates said.

“We’ve had our disappointments, but I think it’s just euphoria among those who have been inside the building,” said museum board President Virginia Wright.

Even unfinished, the building has “exceeded, absolutely exceeded” expectations, she said.

So have costs--and problems.

Installation of a 48-foot steel version of sculptor Jonathan Borofsky’s “Hammering Man” has been postponed until next summer. The moving arm was ruined when the 11-ton sculpture broke through a sling and crashed to the pavement while being mounted outside the lobby entrance Sept. 28.

The general contractor, Howard S. Wright Construction Co., bid $24 million and promised to finish work by March 19.

Soon, however, the builder was calling Venturi’s design “unconstructable” and demanding $12 million more. Change orders multiplied like M.C. Escher birds and lizards as the dispute escalated.

Tempers were still simmering as crews installed recently ordered kitchen equipment, revised handrails and reprogrammed freight elevators while curators and staff scrambled to install art early this month.

“As the contractor finishes in one area, we’re moving in right behind him with installation of furnishings,” said Kathleen Parry, project director for the Museum Development Authority.

“It’s an extremely accelerated schedule for art installation . . . but it’s still achievable,” Parry said. “We really don’t expect anything to cause any further delay.”

Relations between Venturi, Howard S. Wright (no relation to the museum president) and the authority formed by the city and museum remain strained.

“It has waxed and waned,” Gates said.

The contractor’s $12-million claim for change orders and unanticipated design problems has been submitted to nonbinding mediation, and a recommended settlement could come as early as late November, Parry said.

A court battle appears likely, however.