A Gleaming New Guggenheim for Grimy Bilbao

Just months from its inauguration, with one work of art in place, several interior walls unfinished and the entrance plaza slippery with mud, the spectacular new Guggenheim Bilbao Museum designed by Frank O. Gehry is still something of a work-in-progress. Yet already, it seems, the $100 million building has won the hearts of many inhabitants of this industrial port city in Spain's northern Basque region.

It was not always so. At first, many local taxpayers balked at the idea of their money being spent on what was called a ''pharaonic'' project. Local artists argued that the money should go to, well, local artists; opposition politicians said the money could be better used for schools and hospitals; newspapers warned that local culture would be controlled by an ''imperialist'' American foundation that was being paid a huge sum for the privilege.

Further, this grimy city had no tradition of devotion to the arts. Thanks to nearby iron-ore deposits, it became the center of Spain's steel industry in the late 19th century. A busy port and new shipyards added to its prosperity, which in turn spawned profitable banking and insurance sectors. For Bilbaoans, hard work and moneymaking have always taken precedence over beauty and style.

When the Guggenheim project was brought up for debate, however, the Basque Government had more than culture in mind. It argued that, after a grim 15 years in which the closing of steel plants, shipyards and port facilities had swollen unemployment, the museum would serve as both motor and symbol of economic revival and urban renewal. It also appealed to Basque nationalist pride, promising that a world-class museum showing the best of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation's collection and drawing perhaps 500,000 visitors a year would put the city on the map.

Today, Bilbaoans seem persuaded. Even the unorthodox terms of the 75-year agreement creating the museum are no longer much of an issue. The Basques agreed to cover the $100 million construction cost, to create a $50 million acquisitions fund, to pay a one-time $20 million fee to the Guggenheim and to subsidize the museum's $12 million annual budget. In exchange, the Guggenheim would manage the institution, rotate parts of its own permanent collection through here and organize temporary shows.

Perhaps even more surprising, given the unconventional appearance of Mr. Gehry's multifaceted stone, glass and titanium-covered museum, many residents already appear genuinely fond of what one businesswoman affectionately called the beast now poised on the banks of the Nervion River against a backdrop of traditional 19th-century buildings. Not long ago, Bilbao was trapped in the past; now it is reaching for a designer future.

In that, it is emulating Barcelona and Seville. Using the occasions of the Summer Olympics in Barcelona and the universal exhibition in Seville, both in 1992, these cities spent heavily on new highways, bridges and cultural institutions, many of them designed by top international architects. At the time, Bilbao felt left out; now it is rushing to catch up.

Two new bridges over the Nervion have just opened, one of them an ultramodern suspension bridge for pedestrians designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, who is also building a new city airport. A subway system designed by Sir Norman Foster of Britain opened 18 months ago and has already relieved traffic. A low-lying river bank known as Abandoibarra, long occupied by factories, warehouses and a railroad depot, is being redeveloped by the Argentine-born architect Cesar Pelli.

Even before its official opening in early October, however, it is the museum that has captured the city's imagination. Standing at the eastern end of Abandoibarra, facing the river on one side and the city on the other, it resembles a vast free-form sculpture with a jumble of titanium-clad cubes rising from its center. Two rectangular gallery wings are covered in Spanish limestone, but a third, its titanium exterior giving it a shimmering silver look, stretches no less than 430 feet beside the river.

''The idea of this looking like a boat was my response to the river,'' Mr. Gehry explained, pointing to the gigantic gallery wing that curves under the Principes de Espana Bridge. ''The other side, more fragmented and covered with stone, is more in scale with the city. The whole thing is about fitting the building into Bilbao. So for me it's about the imagery of the river and the imagery of the city.''

Obviously a positive local response to the museum is crucial, but Bilbaoans have felt reassured that international experts also like it. On May 31, coinciding with the presentation of the annual Pritzker Architecture Prize in the unfinished museum, a group of artists, architects and wealthy patrons of the arts toured the building and came away impressed.

''This building is fantastic,'' said Sverre Fenh, the Norwegian architect who was this year's Pritzker laureate. ''It's a sketch, an instant sketch that has been realized. I am very moved by the freedom of creation and the freedom of poetry built into the creation.'' Christian de Portzamparc, a leading French architect who won the Pritzker Prize in 1994, described the building simply as ''a masterpiece.''

The 257,000-square-foot museum is entered through a lobby that leads to a dramatic 165-foot-high atrium, one and a half times the height of the rotunda of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York. The atrium, which Mr. Gehry has nicknamed ''The Flower'' because it culminates in a series of angled geometrical shapes, serves as the organizing center for the entire museum.

Glass-covered elevators and staircases cling to its walls, while balconies on the second and third floors lead to the more traditional spaces. To one side of the atrium, the long barrel-roofed gallery known as ''The Boat'' opens up like the mouth of a huge whale. And it is there that the museum's first art work, ''Snake'' by Richard Serra, has been installed. Yet even this 172-ton steel sculpture comprising three serpentine curves 13 feet high and 100 feet long is dwarfed by the gallery.

Whether the architecture will overwhelm the art is a question that Mr. Gehry has been asked before. ''The building has to have wonderful art but it also has to be a draw,'' he said. ''This was part of my mandate. This has a sense of place in relation to the city and other buildings. I believe artists want that too. They want a building to have importance in the community.''

The museum will open with ''The Guggenheim Museums and the Art of This Century,'' a 300-piece overview of 20th-century art from Cubism to new media art. Most pieces will come from the Guggenheim's own collection, but Bilbao has also acquired paintings by Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still and has commissioned new works by Francesco Clemente, Anselm Kiefer and Jenny Holzer as well as Mr. Serra.

Not on show, though, will be the painting most wanted by the museum. In January, it submitted a 65-page request to the Reina Sofia Art Center in Madrid for the loan of ''Guernica,'' Picasso's landmark painting of the 1937 bombing by Nazi aircraft of the small Basque town of Guernica, a few miles south of here. In May, the request was turned down on the ground that the painting was too fragile to travel, a decision that was promptly seen in the Basque region as politically motivated.

''I was disappointed by the reasons given,'' said Thomas Krens, the director of the Guggenheim Foundation, showing a visitor a special gallery reserved for ''Guernica'' in the hope that the decision will be reversed. ''The painting has traveled to 35 institutions. It is part of the history and blood of this region.''

Still, eager to acquire a local identity, the museum has begun acquiring works by contemporary Spanish artists, although not without stirring controversy. For example, it has bought works by the country's two best known living artists, Antoni Tapies and Eduardo Chillida, but it has so far overlooked Jorge Oteiza, an outspoken critic of the Guggenheim Bilbao who was once the Basque region's most prominent sculptor.

Recently, Mr. Serra took it upon himself to serve as mediator, inviting the 90-year-old sculptor to the museum to view ''Snake'' and then admiring Mr. Oteiza's works in the local Fine Arts Museum. Later, over dinner, sitting beside Carmen Gimenez, the Guggenheim's curator of 20th-century art, Mr. Serra urged Mr. Krens to buy at least one Oteiza as a way of making peace with the old man.

Mr. Krens said that Oteiza was already on the acquisition list, but Mr. Serra insisted, demanding a written commitment. Finally, with a sigh, Mr. Krens took out a pen and wrote on the tablecloth: ''Carmen, Buy 1 Oteiza. T. Krens. 30 May 1997.'' As dinner broke up, Mr. Serra collected the tablecloth and triumphantly handed it to Ms. Gimenez. The artist as diplomat, he looked pleased with himself.