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Great experiences with art cannot be entirely assured, no matter how great the collection. It depends on who is doing the looking, and it depends on the state they are in while doing the looking.

Do I remember the Musée Rodin fondly because the sculptures are sublime? Or is it because when I first saw them, at the age of 18, I was in Paris on the lam, ostensibly on a babysitting assignment for a sensible English couple, but actually living for a month in an attic room above the rue Mouffetard with my then-boyfriend, who was at least two dog years older than myself, bracingly left-wing, and marvelously indifferent to the idea of ever meeting my parents? (He never did.)

Somehow, all of this filtered into the milky white light that I remember flooding the galleries and marble staircases of that museum, the fine mist that hung in the trees below its windows (it had been raining), and the sinuous lines of

L'enfant prodigue, Rodin's bronze youth who lifts his arms in an arc of exaltation. These were, I believe, the supreme conditions for seeing art.

Sadly, I cannot guarantee the same in the venues listed below. However, choose your travel partner carefully — or go alone, which is always a thrill — and your odds are good. And remember: Epiphany is in the eye of the beholder.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York

If I had to pick one museum in which to spend all eternity, it would probably be the Met, by virtue of its encyclopedic holdings. The museum encompasses all world cultures, with profound depth in areas such as Greek and Roman Art (statues, pottery, and even some delicate glass objects that have somehow descended from antiquity unscathed), Asian art and European painting (including spectacular Rembrandts and Italian Renaissance masterworks).

As well, there's the much vaunted Costume Institute, where I once inspected the slippers worn by the Empress Josephine at her coronation (very small, scarlet, and encrusted with white beadwork).

The big thrill though — for this admittedly Eurocentric gallery visitor, at least — is the extraordinary collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, holdings deep and rich with Van Gogh, Manet, Degas, Gauguin and Cézanne.

The Met also gets top marks for drama. Ascending the staircase from the magnificent lobby to the galleries above, one has the sense of scaling Parnassus, with the clouds parting to admit revelation. Could there be any loftier way to transition from the everyday world into the realm of art? I think not.

Venice Biennale

Every two years, La Serenissima is overrun by contemporary art lovers from around the world, who flock by the thousands to see the newest offerings. (The next incarnation is slated for the summer of 2008.)

Dozens of countries set up national pavilions in the leafy Giardini di Biennale, which they fill with the work of their most celebrated contemporary artists. I will never forget the year (it was 1993) that Hans HaackeÖ jack-hammered the marble floor of the German pavilion and left it in shards, leaving gallery visitors to wander among the ruins.

Major thematic group shows are also staged in the huge Italian Pavilion and the Arsenale, a historic armoury. Here, a changing roster of curators attempts to wrestle order from the chaos of contemporary art, usually with limited success.

Still, this distinctive friction between old and new makes Venice a dreamy place to think about art. Side trips to the Gallerie dell'Accademia provide the necessary grounding: The museum has a room full of Byzantine icons and early Christian art that is wonderful. The day I visited with my daughter, the windows were open and there were birds flying around in the gallery.

Museo del Prado

Madrid

The holdings of the Prado reflect the ambitions of centuries of Spanish royalty, as well as the historical role of Spain in European affairs.

The gallery is rich in holdings of Dutch art (Weyden, Bouts, Memling, Rubens, van Dyck and Breughel), owing to Spain's longstanding military hold over the Low Countries.

But the most glorious and distinctive aspect of the museum is its collections of Spanish art. Major paintings by Ribera and Murrillo are a warm up to the main event: a meaty display of the finest works of Diego Velazquez, including a number of his enchanting portraits of the royal children of the Spanish court and his most famous work, Las Meninas (1656).

This painting depicts the royal household of Philip IV — the regents, the royal children, the servants, the dwarfs, the ladies in waiting, and the artist himself, standing at his easel — all held in a delicate equilibrium by the commanding eye of the artist. (The Italian Baroque painter Luca Giordano described it as "the theology of painting.")

The Prado also houses a room full of Goya's Black Paintings. Created in the depths of the artist's late-life disillusionment over humanity's capacity for evil, they are hellish depictions of ghouls, demons and struggling mortals that conjure up the dark forces of history.

Chinati Foundation

Marfa, Texas

George Dubya's back 40 may not seem like the likeliest place to see the world's most definitive, and perfect, installation of minimalist art, but such are the ironies of fate.

It was here, in the West Texas desert, that American artist Donald Judd launched his personal Fitzcarraldo back in 1979, transforming the former Fort D.A. Russell military base (and the 138 hectares it stands on) into a contemporary art shrine that now attracts visitors from around the world. (Judd's conversion was completed and opened to the public in 1986.)

The austere cluster of buildings are mostly given over to the works of Judd and his favorite artists, Dan Flavin (who works with illuminated fluorescent tubing) and John Chamberlain (crushed automobiles). All three artists are seen here to their best imaginable advantage.

The crowning achievement is an astonishing series of milled aluminum box-like sculptures by Judd, polished to a reflective lustre and installed in immaculate rows in two converted airplane hangars. Each sculpture is a distinct variation on the rectilinear theme; as you stroll the aisles, they seem to appear and disappear like desert mirages in the shifting light.

Coming down from such a rarefied state of optical bliss is best achieved in the bar of the Hotel Paisano, a classic 1930s stucco colonial-style establishment in the centre of town where Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor stayed during the 1955 shooting of Giant.

At night, visitors are invited to visit the Marfa Mystery Lights, mysterious firefly-like illuminations that glimmer beside the highway after sundown. These are best viewed while drinking cold beer in the comfort of a rental van, preferably in the company of good friends.

Sistine Chapel

Vatican City, Rome

It's tough to choose between the warmth and humanity of Giotto's Arena Chapel in Padua, and Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, created at the peak of his powers.

But ultimately, Michelangelo's is the more monumental accomplishment. (And fortunately, you don't have to choose, as Padua is just a short day trip from Rome.)

Michelangelo's ceiling, with its frescos of sibyls, prophets, and dramatic Biblical tableaux, was painted between 1508 and 1512, with the Last Judgement over the altar completed some years later (1535 to 1541).

Considering the whole, you can see the development of the artist from the younger man with a fascination with colour (the frescoes were vividly restored in the 1980s and 90s to their full-throttle original), volume (those draperies) and the human form (always buff to the bursting point and threatening to break out of the picture plane); and the older artist, clearly haunted by notions of his own mortality.

The Sistine Chapel has it all, from the divine spark to the drunken debauchery of Noah, who stands in for man's post-lapsarian state of disgrace.

Michelangelo captures this arc of human fallibility with majesty and compassion, producing a spectacle of human folly and divine judgment that humbles all who see it.

The State Hermitage Museum

St. Petersburg

Like the Louvre in Paris, the Hermitage is housed spectacularly in a former royal palace, its sweeping collections reflecting the glory of the czars and Russia's passionate ambitions to take its place as part of Europe.

A string of magnificent 18th- and 19th-century buildings along the banks of the Neva River provide a glorious backdrop for looking at the best of the more than three million objects contained within its walls. The strengths: the modernist masterpieces of Gauguin, Bonnard and Matisse (including The Dance and The Red Room), the finest collection of Dutch painting outside of the Netherlands, and a spectacular collection of French neo-classical sculpture that Montreal Museum of Fine Arts director Guy Cogeval described to me as "a hymn to beauty." The museum reflects, he says, "a passion for collecting — of course in the person of Catherine the Great, but it was also a passion that devoured most of the czars after her."

This ravenous appetite for beauty, and the gratifying satiation of it, define the vibe here. It's a museum built from desire.

Haida Gwaii Villages

Queen Charlotte Islands

People compare the experience of beaching a boat at the abandoned Haida villages of Ninstints, Haina or Tanu to the hush of entering Chartres Cathedral. Perhaps the comparison should be made the other way around. As Vancouver Art Gallery chief curator Daina Augaitis describes it, "You feel the stillness. You can sense that there is something special here."

For the past two years, Augaitis has been living and breathing her upcoming exhibition Raven Travelling: Two Centuries of Haida Art, which opens at the Vancouver Art Gallery on June 10, a show that will present an array of masks, boxes, feast dishes and other ceremonial objects culled from these shores.

"The sense of history is so overwhelming," she says, still struggling to describe the fusion of nature and culture that is at the heart of this place and its rich traditions.

Depressions in the ground mark the original footings of the longhouses, most of which have long since rotted away. In some villages, the old poles still stand, but all are submitting to gravity and decay, "making that journey back to the earth," Augaitis says, "which is what they were all about in the first place."

Everywhere, nature presses in, with the fecund luxuriance that provided the material underpinning for one of the world's most refined cultures. "There's a whole world in that landscape," Augaitis says. "Mountain ranges, lush forests, marshes, rocky beaches, sand spits. You can see why the Haida imagined it in their creation myths as a whole universe unto itself."

Pack your bags

Musée Rodin: 79 rue de Varenne, Paris; 33 (1) 441-86110; www.musee-rodin.fr

Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd Street, New York; 212-535-7710; www.metmuseum.org

Venice Biennale: www.labiennale.org

Gallerie dell'Accademia: Campo della Carita, Dorsoduro, Venice; 39 (041) 522-2247; www.gallerieaccademia.org/museo.html and http://web.tiscali.it/wwwart/accademia/english/ind_engl.htm

Museo del Prado: Paseo del Prado, Madrid; www.museoprado.mcu.es/home.html

Chianti Foundation: Marfa, Texas (three hours by road from El Paso); 432-729-4362; www.chinati.org/english2/index.htm

Sistine Chapel: Vatican City; www.vatican.va

Cappella Scrovegni (Arena Chapel): Padua, Italy; 39 (049) 201-0020; www.cappelladegliscrovegni.it and www.wga.hu/html/g/giotto/padova/index.html

The State Hermitage Museum:
St. Petersburg; 7 (812) 710-9625; www.hermitagemuseum.org.

Vancouver Art Gallery: 750 Hornby St.; 604-662-4719; www.vanartgallery.bc.ca

Haida Gwaii Village: www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/bc/gwaiihaanas/index_e.asp.