Infinite passages: Serra in Bilbao: challenging architectural dominance, a vast new installation by Richard Serra now permanently occupies the largest gallery at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

The serpentine cantilevers and gleaming titanium cladding of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao appeared this past summer to be even more exaggerated and expressive than they did on my first visit, soon after the museum opened eight years ago. Yet the structure, which then seemed outlandish for a rather lackluster port city in northern Spain, now appears quite at home in its surroundings. It gracefully corresponds with the undulating verdant hills of the Basque countryside visible in the distance, and its nautical shapes acquiesce more explicitly to the town's history, of which it has become an integral part. The structure also seems in greater harmony with the freshly cleaned and restored Beaux-Arts apartment and office buildings that are its immediate neighbors, as well as with the bright new modernist structures nearby, such as a massive Sheraton hotel built by Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta, and the sleek additions that Spanish architect Luis Uriarte designed for the Museum of Fine Arts. A shiny new tram connecting the old part of the city with the new now snakes alongside the Guggenheim like a lively offspring of the museum itself; and still guarding the entrance to the complex like a floral sphinx is Jeff Koons's giant Puppy (1992), as vivacious and attentive as ever.

The museum's interior, however, is no less problematic than in the past. Its cavernous atrium and eccentric exhibition areas compete for attention with every art-work and installation. The fragmented galleries on three zigzagging levels tend to thwart curatorial ambitions of thematic continuity in the museum's big shows; the huge traveling exhibition "The Aztec Empire," on view over the summer, was a case in point. Employing green-tinted glass walls and vitrines, the show's designer, Mexican architect Enrique Norten, made an admirable effort to lend some coherence to the fractured display areas allotted to the show on two levels. But the installation seemed chaotic and awkward compared to the way the show was presented last year at New York's Guggenheim. Even in that famously recalcitrant space, the exhibition appeared to have greater continuity and evocative power, aided certainly by Norten's use of coffee-brown felt-covered walls and curvilinear display cases running along the museum's spiraling ramp.

Particularly troublesome for artists and curators in Bilbao ever since the museum's inauguration has been Gehry's vast, elliptical Gallery 104. Located at street level, just off the atrium, the enormous hall is 430 feet long and spans 80 feet at its widest point. An irregular ceiling reaches its apex at 75 feet. The area has long been known as the Fish Gallery, since its shape vaguely resembles one of Gehry's trademark fish forms. Ensconced in the middle of the space and promulgating the scaly creature theme, Richard Serra's enormous undulating steel-plate Snake (1994-97) was commissioned by the Guggenheim Bilbao for its 1997 opening [see A.i.A., July '97], and has wowed viewers since its debut. Gehry has stated to the press that he designed the room with Serra's work in mind. Even so, and as handsome as the work is, it was dwarfed by the gallery, and other artists' efforts have been even more seriously diminished by the eccentricities of Gallery 104 and by the overwhelming spectacle of the architecture.

In 1999, when Serra's traveling exhibition "Torqued Ellipses" appeared in this space after its debut at MOCA's Geffen Contemporary in Los Angeles, it struck some observers as the perfect solution to the problem of the Fish Gallery. On view along with Snake were eight massive steel-plate sculptures. Featuring gracefully curved and sloping wailed enclosures open at the top, the works merged sculptural form with architectural space [see A.i.A., Feb. '00].

Among those most impressed by the show were Guggenheim Foundation director Thomas Krens and Guggenheim Bilbao director Juan Ignacio Vidarte, who invited the artist to propose a permanent display of his work for the gallery. Serra's connections to Spain are extensive and complex; his father came from Mallorca, and over the years Serra has studied and worked in the country on numerous occasions. Moreover, works by Basque sculptors Eduardo Chillida and Jorge Oteiza [see article this issue] had an early and lasting influence on the Bay Area-born artist.

In October 2003, Serra submitted a proposal for "The Matter of Time," a site-specific work encompassing seven new large-scale sculptures, plus Snake. It was approved by museum officials and trustees in February of the following year. Fabricated in Siegen, Germany, the 38 steel plates constituting the various elements of the new installation were shipped to Bilbao in late April of this year. Serra assembled and arranged the sculptures in the museum's parking lot before moving them indoors. On June 8, he presented his magnum opus to the public. It met with general acclaim from the international press, not only as a sculptural tour de force and the crowning achievement of Serra's career to date but also as a striking example of how a work of art, if it's bold and ambitious enough, can withstand and even triumph over the most audacious architectural gambit.