UNDERGROUND MUSEUMS--A CAPITAL IDEA

Underground museum? Sounds like a sneaky showplace for naughty pictures, cloak-and-dagger paraphernalia or the latest in revolutionary graffiti art. Well, surprise, it’s not.

It is, in fact, a very proper new $73.2-million repository housing two museums and an exhibition hall opening Monday in the nation’s capital. Or under the nation’s capital. Piquant idea. Prominent location right smack in the middle of some of the nation’s most imposing overground architectural grandiosities. Independence Avenue just a stone’s throw from George Washington’s obelisk, Bulfinch’s wedding bell Capitol dome, I. M. Pei’s lapidary wedge at the east end of the National Gallery. The Mall. Full of big-chested buildings with more decorations than a Bulgarian admiral, complex edifices with egos. Some of them are under the same aegis as the new ones, that noble pack rat of all good things awesome and odd, the Smithsonian Institution, doyen of 14 museums from the mighty Air and Space to the exquisite Freer Gallery.

Now they’ve concocted this modestly opulent reliquary that wants to burrow shyly like a hibernating groundhog. It’s a winsome concept. But people want to be impressed by art palaces, they like to labor up long stairs beneath regal neoclassical columns. How are folks going to take to descending as into the crypt of a royal tomb? It’s a new body language for a museum, swapping the symbolism of enlightenment for the evocation of mystery.

Pretty good symbolism for museums full of art that still says “exotic” to most Americans. One is the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery for Asian Art, the other the National Museum for African Art. Both are full of treasures from fabled places removed in time and space, evoking occult romance. African masks rekindle kid shivers at the movies as our hero stole through the underbrush while tribesmen danced by firelight. Silver rhytons from Iran call up grand viziers and Persian princes. Chinese jades look back at Sherlock Holmes peering through a jeweler’s loop. Of course, that’s all lovable movie kitsch and these are the real McCoy radiating awesome halations. Even the architecture conjures up Kublai Khan and Taj Mahal in miniature.

“Thought you said it was underground.”

It is, but you have to get in. About the only thing they didn’t think of was making it a subway station.

The visible part of the museum flanks the lovely Enid A. Haupt Victorian gardens in front of the venerable Smithsonian brick castle. You see two facing square pavilions. The African is topped by half a dozen copper-clad domes, the Asian by pyramids. A third pavilion off to the side looks like an Arabian Nights bandstand. The museums lie interred between them on tree levels about the length of a football field. The effect is free-floating and exotic.

Imagine this being designed in Boston by the firm of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott. American romanticism lives. So does Japanese romanticism. The design is based on a concept by Junzo Yoshimura, who suffered a stroke and was unable to continue the project.

The principal designer, Jean-Paul Carlham, is said to be in a huff over changes in interior detail made by the museum staff. It looks fine to a visitor just off the plane. Double staircases with patina green railings make a ceremonial descent with all manner of circular oculi, slit skylights and cool tile fountains. The traffic circulation doesn’t simplify one’s jet lag, but the cosmetics are terrific. Classic Post-Mod.

Besides, the new complex solves several Smithsonian problems at one stroke. If any place needs museums representing all of the continents and all of the peoples of the world, it is the land of the free. The Smithsonian already had an Oriental museum and an exquisite one at that, but the Freer Gallery had a problem. Established in 1923 around the gift of Detroit financier Charles Lang Freer, the gallery is forbidden to borrow, lend or hold special exhibitions. The Smithsonian wanted to expand the scope and public appeal of its Asian exhibitions. What to do?

The dilemma was untangled by a princely gift from Arthur M. Sackler, the collector and philanthropist who did so much for the Metropolitan Museum, Harvard and Princeton universities among others. He gave the Smithsonian 1,000 of his best Asian objects plus $4 million toward the building before dying earlier this year.

The rather staggering results are seen in four inaugural exhibitions. “Pavilions and Immortal Mountains” includes Chinese decorative arts and paintings. It demonstrates the ability of rich objects such as a Ming dynasty clothes cupboard to be so richly designed and crafted that a single object articulates the space of a large room.

“Nomads and Nobility” rounds up artifacts from the ancient Near East whose small size does nothing to prevent them from taking on the scale of monumental stone reliefs. A lion-headed vessel from the first millennium BC has all the elegance and ferocity of Assyria. A Sassanian pouring vessel bears reliefs of dancing nudes that are a provocative combination of East Indian and medieval style. Much of the work is silver and has a bewitching lunar glow.

In the minds of the staff, the Sackler Gallery is to be the popular branch of Asian art while the Freer retains its connoisseur’s appeal. But that is a highly relative notion. The special exhibition, “In Praise Of Ancestors,” is a thickly installed compendium of Chinese ritual bronze vessels requiring scholarly attention. Oh well. There is great charm in the little carved animals of “Monsters, Myths and Minerals.” They even have a series of beasties arranged in the orb of Chinese astrology. Visitors can read their horoscopes according to this ancient system.

One problem down. But what to do about African art?

There was an African museum, too, but it was housed in a warren of old brownstones near the Capitol and nobody much went. Now it too has gone public by going underground. The permanent collection is nothing to brag about, but there are handsome new additions, like a gift of 20 juicy Benin bronzes from the nearby Hirshhorn Museum and a handsome display of textiles and utilitarian objects.

The real show-stopper, however, is “African Art and the Cycle of Life.” Anyone who learned this subject from books will be blown away by the number of oft-reproduced classics included among the 88 international loans. Good grief. That Yombe male figure is even more ferocious than his photographs and the Songye stool has more refined ritual power. We’ve seen a lot of hanged men in Western movies, but none that suggest the delicate piece of a Mbole man strung up for some crime.

Two problems solved. Finally there is the new home for the Smithsonian International Center. Its third-level gallery space is the only one that feels like a basement, its show the only one not strictly an art exhibition. Titled “Generations,” it investigates the lore, legends and cultural facts of human birth using everything from baby rattles to illuminated manuscripts. It is not art but it is interesting.

Big problem solved. How do you build a new museum when you are out of space? You put it down in the cool dark ground where it plays to the enigma of art. It also might come in handy as a shelter if some politician pushes the wrong button.