Seattle Art Museum

Listen for a moment before you look up. Beneath the hum of First Avenue traffic and the rumble of buses, there is a slow, steady rhythm in the air. It comes from a giant black figure on the sidewalk, bent over his work, his arm rising and falling in silence. The air here often smells faintly of salt and rain, carried up the hill from Elliott Bay. You are standing at the doorstep of the Seattle Art Museum, and its first artwork greets you before you even reach the doors.

That figure is Hammering Man, a kinetic sculpture by the American artist Jonathan Borofsky. He has stood here since the early 1990s, several stories tall, cut from flat steel and painted black. His motorised arm swings down in a slow arc, over and over, through the day. Borofsky made versions of this worker for cities around the world. His idea was simple. He wanted to honour ordinary labour, the people whose hands build and repair a city. Here is a detail many visitors miss. On Labor Day, the American holiday for workers, the hammering man traditionally stops and rests.

Now turn and look at the building itself. This downtown home opened in 1991, designed by the architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. They were famous for a playful, thoughtful style that mixed grand tradition with everyday street life. Notice the pale stone of the facade, cut in broad horizontal bands. Notice the arches around the entrance, picked out in coloured terracotta, a kind of fired clay. Above you, the museum's name is carved in large letters that run along the wall like an inscription on a Roman temple.

The building sits on a slope, and that slope shapes everything. First Avenue climbs steeply here, so the facade steps up the hill as you walk past it. Venturi and Scott Brown chose not to hide this. Instead they let the stone bands and window lines follow the street, so the museum feels part of the sidewalk rather than set apart from it. Across the street, the long public staircase called the Harbor Steps falls toward the waterfront. On a clear day you catch a slice of blue water between the buildings.

The museum is older than this building. It was founded in the 1930s by Richard Fuller and his mother, Margaret MacTavish Fuller. Their family collection, especially their love of Asian art, formed the heart of it. The first home was an Art Deco building in Volunteer Park, on Capitol Hill, a few kilometres east of here. Art Deco is the sleek, geometric style of the 1920s and 1930s. That original building still stands. Today it is the Seattle Asian Art Museum, one of three sites that share the museum's name.

Step inside, and look up. Hanging high above the lobby, you may see a row of real cars, tumbling through the air. Long rods of light burst out of them, frozen like fireworks. This is a work by the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, known for making art with gunpowder and explosions. The cars seem to flip through a single violent moment, one after another, as if the blast were caught in slow motion. It is a strange and beautiful thing to see above a ticket desk, and most people stop mid-step.

In 2007 the museum grew. A major expansion, designed by Allied Works Architecture, joined the original building to a new tower to the south. The two structures meet so smoothly that many visitors never notice where one ends and the other begins. Here is the second surprise. The upper floors of that tower were built as offices for a bank, while the lower floors belong to the galleries. Art and commerce share the same steel frame, stacked one on top of the other.

As you move upstairs, look for the grand stairway lined with large stone figures. These are Chinese carvings of animals and attendants, the kind once placed along the sacred approach to imperial tombs. Camels, rams and stern guardians stand on the steps as if waiting for a procession. They are heavy, weathered and calm. Climbing past them gives the building a slow, ceremonial feel, a pause between the street outside and the quiet rooms above. Take this stairway rather than the lift, at least once.

The collection reaches across the world. You will find European paintings, ancient Mediterranean objects, African masks and sculpture, and modern American art. But one of the strongest threads belongs to this region. The museum holds important works by Native artists of the Northwest Coast, the Indigenous nations of the Pacific shoreline. Look for carved masks, woven baskets and painted designs in black and red. Many use bold, curving shapes called formline, a visual language that outlines animals and spirits in flowing, connected lines.

The Pacific Northwest also had its own painters, and the museum gives them room. In the mid twentieth century, a small group of artists here became known as the Northwest School. Mark Tobey was among the best known. His paintings are often covered in fine, dense white lines, almost like handwriting, influenced by his study of East Asian calligraphy. Standing close to one is like looking into rain on a dark window. It is quiet, inward work, shaped by the grey light and long winters of this coast.

The museum does not stop at its walls. Down by the water, north of here, is the Olympic Sculpture Park, which opened in 2007 and is also part of the Seattle Art Museum. It is an outdoor space that zigzags down toward the bay, crossing a road and railway tracks on its way. Large works stand in the open air, including a bright red steel sculpture by Alexander Calder and huge curving steel walls by Richard Serra. With the Olympic Mountains behind them, the art and the landscape share the view.

Inside, the galleries change often. Special exhibitions arrive and leave through the year, so the rooms you walk through today may look very different in a few months. Give yourself time. The building is larger than it seems from the street, and the floors connect in ways that can surprise you. Benches appear where you need them. Some windows open onto the city, so you can look from a painting to a rooftop and back again. Those small breaks help the eye rest.

When you leave, step back onto First Avenue and let the city return. Pike Place Market is only a few blocks north, with its fish stalls, flower sellers and crowds. The waterfront lies below you, down the steps. Before you go, look once more at Hammering Man. His arm is still rising and falling, patient and unhurried, just as it was when you arrived. Listen again for that slow rhythm under the traffic. It will keep going long after you have walked away.