BAY AREA QUAKE : Asian Art Museum Is Hit Hard : Treasures: Losses are figured at more than $10 million, but other museums emerge relatively unscathed.

As the director of the Asian Art Museum took a measure of damage to the Bay Area’s art treasures Friday, he sighed at the destruction.

“It’s so tragic, so devastating,” Rand Castile said. From the front steps of the Asian Art Museum in Golden Gate Park, he nodded at San Francisco’s beloved band shell, scarred with deep cracks and crumbling pillars. “Look at our poor friend there. It took the quake pretty hard.”

Inside the museum, damage was far worse, and art experts scrambled to assess losses. The Asian Art Museum’s Avery Brundage Collection is the Western world’s largest collection of Asian art. Even though the vast majority of its works survived intact, enough valuable pieces toppled to make the institution the city’s hardest-hit museum. Damage to at least 31 works was estimated at more than $10 million. Some were beyond repair, and museum officials may discover more as their inspections continue.

Although it will be weeks until final estimates can be made on the damage to the Bay Area’s art treasures and museums, officials already say the toll will be at least $13.5 million, a heart-wrenching loss but a relatively modest one by art standards.

Margie O’Driscoll, Mayor Art Agnos’ liaison for the arts, has spent days frantically assessing damage to collections, and she said the Asian Museum was the hardest hit, with at least $10 million in damage to its collection alone. The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, best known for its American art collection, is thought to have suf fered $3.5 million to $5 million in damage to its building and collection.

Several American sculptures were damaged at the De Young, including Hiram Powers’ “Bust of California” and Franklin Simmons’ “Bust of Sherman.”

The California Palace of the Legion of Honor also suffered interior damage and small losses in its collection. A few pieces of French furniture and a few sculptures suffered at the Legion, including Lorenzo Ottini’s portrait bust of Maffeo Barberini, a 17th-Century work.

“The best of the best is still here,” said Linda Jablon, public information officer for the de Young and Legion of Honor. “All the paintings are intact, and we’ve only had minor damage to other works.”

Light ceramic or porcelain objects and heavy statues took the brunt of Tuesday’s damage in the Bay Area art world.

Three exceptionally valuable works in particular represent devastating losses to the Asian Museum collection, Castile said. A pair of 17th-Century Chinese porcelains were shattered and are thought to be beyond repair. In addition, a 40-inch-tall, 6th-Century Buddhist triad “quite literally jumped across the room,” Castile said, breaking into seven pieces. Although it may be possible to restore that object, it is a painted work, and museum workers are desperately trying to recover every flake of the ancient paint, a daunting task.

Perhaps the museum’s most discouraging loss, however, was a 2nd-Century sandstone Indian sculpture, Nagaraja, which collapsed altogether. One of only two such pieces in the world, it will be almost impossible to restore, Castile said.

“Can you imagine walking into your house and finding your collection scattered and broken?” Castile asked. “The horror of it is so great that you don’t know where to go first.”

One place that the Asian and other museums expect to turn is the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, which was quick to offer its conservation expertise.

Complicating the enormous cleanup task at some museums is the likelihood that asbestos was knocked loose by the earthquake. At the Asian, museum workers were forced out of some areas Friday morning by asbestos removal crews, and that project was expected to drag on for several days.

While the Asian battled destruction on two fronts, the news was better for most area museums. Staff members feared the worst at the Mexican Museum, a small institution in Ft. Mason that nevertheless has amassed 7,000 pieces of varied Mexican work, one of the largest collections of Mexican art outside that country. When the quake struck Tuesday, employees heard crashing throughout the building and believed the collection, much of it built on donations from the Rockefeller family, had suffered irreparable damage.

As the staff approached the museum for the first time in daylight Friday, cracks and sunken sidewalks surrounding the building seemed to confirm their fears. The group entered through the museum store, where dozens of objects lay shattered on the ground.

But, miraculously, the vast majority of the collection escaped without harm. A few pieces of highly valued folk art, including a 1935-era funerary procession for the Day of the Dead created in Metepec, were tipped over and broken. But the museum’s treasured Santos, Colonial-period figures, survived without apparent damage, as did most of the works on display and in storage.

“It is phenomenal how lucky we are,” Director Marcie Acosta-Colon said.