The Best Museums

Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires: This museum contains the world's largest collection of Argentine sculptures and paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries. It also houses European art dating from the pre-Renaissance period to the present day. The collections include notable pieces by Manet, Goya, El Greco, and Gauguin.

MALBA-Colección Constantini, Buenos Aires: This stunning new private museum houses one of the most impressive collections of Latin American art anywhere. Temporary and permanent exhibitions showcase names like Antonio Berni, Pedro Figari, Frida Kahlo, Candido Portinari, Diego Rivera, and Antonio Siguí. Many of the works confront social issues and explore questions of national identity.

Casa Nacional de la Moneda, Potosí: Silver was discovered in Potosí in the 16th century. During the next few hundred years, Potosí would become one of the most important cities in the Spanish empire. The exhibits at this museum, which was originally a mint, do an excellent job of explaining both the history of Potosí and the process of turning raw silver into money.

Museu de Arte Sacra, Salvador: When you walk into this small but splendid museum, what you hear is not the usual gloomy silence but the soft sweet sound of Handel. It's a small indication of the care curators have taken in assembling and displaying one of Brazil's best collections of Catholic art -- reliquaries, processional crosses, and crucifixes of astonishing refinement. The artifacts are shown in a former monastery, a simple, beautiful building that counts itself as a work of art.

Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro: It's impossible to miss the MAM. It's a long, large, rectangular building lofted off the ground by an arcade of concrete struts, giving the structure the appearance of an airplane wing. Inside are walls of solid plate glass that welcome in both city and sea. Displays present the best of contemporary art from Brazil and Latin America.

Museo Arqueológico Padre Le Paige, San Pedro de Atacama: This little museum will come as an unexpected surprise for its wealth of indigenous artifacts, such as "Miss Chile," a leathered mummy whose skin, teeth, and hair are mostly intact, as well as a display of skulls that show the creepy ancient custom of cranial deformation practiced by the elite as a status symbol. The Atacama Desert is the driest in the world, and this climate has produced some of the best-preserved artifacts in Latin America, on view here.

Fundación Guayasamín, Quito: Quito is most famous for being a city of historical wonders. But this modern art museum proves that the city is also moving forward. Oswaldo Guayasamín is one of Ecuador's best-known modern artists, and this museum has an impressive collection of his often-chaotic work. He used his art to express his hatred for the totalitarian regimes of many Latin American countries in the 1970s. His work is extremely moving and powerful.

Museo de la Nación, Lima: Lima is the museum capital of Peru, and the National Museum traces the art and history of the earliest inhabitants to the Inca Empire, the last before colonization by the Spaniards. In well-organized, chronological exhibits, it covers the country's unique architecture (including scale models of most major ruins in Peru) as well as ceramics and textiles.

Monasterio de Santa Catalina and Museo Santuarios Andinos, Arequipa: The Convent of Santa Catalina, founded in 1579, is the greatest religious monument in Peru. More than a convent, it's an extraordinary and evocative small village, with Spanish-style cobblestone streets, passageways, plazas, and cloisters, where more than 200 sequestered nuns once lived (only a handful remain). Down the street at the Museo Santuarios Andinos is a singular exhibit: Juanita, the Ice Maiden of Ampato. A 13- or 14-year-old girl sacrificed in the 1500s by Inca priests high on a volcano at 6,380m (20,926 ft.), "Juanita" was discovered in almost perfect condition in 1995.

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Sofía Imber, Caracas: Occupying 13 rooms spread out through the labyrinthine architecture of Caracas's Parque Central, the permanent collection here features a small but high-quality collection of singular works by such modern masters as Picasso, Red Grooms, Henry Moore, Joan Miró, and Francis Bacon, as well as a good representation of the conceptual works of Venezuelan star Jesús Soto.