New Yorkers are extremely fortunate, if not spoiled, when it comes to viewing art. We have spectacular permanent collections in our museums, and those museums have enough breadth and clout to ensure that Gotham is graced each season with some of the most desirable traveling exhibitions to visit the United States. When New York’s museums are combined with those of Philadelphia, Boston, Buffalo, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. – cities close enough to be in our own backyard – New Yorkers are guaranteed almost more shows than they can possibly see.

Yet each season there are numerous worthwhile exhibitions that do not make it to our own neighborhood or even to American soil. Last season, for instance, New York did not get the great Raphael retrospective from London, or the late Rembrandt show from Washington D.C.; both were essential viewing. This is understandable when, in the wake of September 11, insurance costs for the shipment of artworks have skyrocketed. Museums must be certain that the cost of mounting an exhibition is going to be worth it: They are going to take fewer risks, as they need each show to be a sure thing, a blockbuster.

The spectacular Jean Helion retrospective, currently at the National Academy of Design, is a case in point. It should have been mounted by the Met or MoMA. But “Helion” would not have even come to New York without the last minute, six-figure financial assistance from a private donor. Art, essentially, is no longer treated as art but as commodity. Fortunately, we still have private donors, and we also have access to the world’s greatest travel hub.

One show that’s going to make a lot of headlines, but won’t make its way to New York is the blockbuster “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” a show of roughly 130 artifacts from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It begins at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art this fall and will then move to Fort Lauderdale in December; Chicago next spring; and Philadelphia in 2007. Many of you will recall the first King Tut exhibition, mounted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art back in 1976.That exhibition was the very first museum “blockbuster,” followed by MoMA’s Picasso retrospective, in 1980.

Since then, it seems, museum shows, not unlike movies, are ultimately judged by how well they do at the box office, not by how well they serve our greater cultural interests. The Met rightly turned down the current King Tut extravaganza – a show that is closer to a publicity stunt, designed to bring viewers in, than it is a scholarly event.

If you trust Philippe de Montebello’s judgment, you won’t be heading to L.A. for “Tutankhamen.” but you might hop a plane for the two shows (at L.A. MOCA’s Pacific Design Center and the UCLA Hammer Museum, respectively) celebrating the work of the wonderful French Modernist designer and architect Jean Prouve (1901-84).

Also opening on the West Coast this fall is a retrospective of work by a great New Yorker, Louis Comfort Tiffany. The show, which will make its debut at the Seattle Art Museum in October, travels on to Toledo and Dallas. “Tiffany” finishes its tour at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art in the fall of 2006. The extensive show contains some 120 works of the artist’s glassware, furniture, metalwork, paintings, and pottery.

We cannot complain about a lack of fine shows on Eastern art here in New York – the Asia Society and the Noguchi Museum graced our city last season with great fare – but two major American shows of Eastern art will not make it here this season. “The Kingdom of Siam: The Art of Central Thailand,” the first U.S. museum show to focus on the art of Ayutthaya, is on view through mid-October at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. It’s worth finding a way to make the trip by car or train.

In October, the Cleveland Museum of Art will be the third and final American stop for “The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America, 1880-1920: Design for the Modern World,” an extensive exhibition of more than 300 choice objects from 75 institutions.

The exhibition “Camille Claudel and Rodin: Fateful Encounter” opens at the Detroit Institute of Arts the same month. It explores the complex relationship – at times romantic, at times professional – between the two artists.

Finally, museum goers who don’t get out of the city much might be surprised at what’s been happening in Houston. The Menil Collection has been mounting some stellar shows the past few years. “The Surreal Calder,” a promising exhibition of approximately 60 of Alexander Calder’s works created between 1932 and 1947, explores the influence of Surrealism on the artist. The show opens in September. It travels on to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art next spring and to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts next summer.

Finally, there are the museums of Europe. With fewer shows making the jump across the pond, the occasional trans-Atlantic flight is becoming even more of a necessity for serious art viewers.

Opening at London’s Tate Modern in November is “Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris,” a show of roughly 50 works, mostly jungle paintings, by the unequaled French master of the moon, the lion’s face, and the palm frond. The Victoria and Albert Museum is currently showing “Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, and Design,” which runs through January 7. The exhibition explores – through animation, models, and the artist’s original notebooks – Leonardo’s theories and inventions, including his tanks and flying contraptions.

“National Treasures of Germany From Luther to the Bauhaus,” opens in September at the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bunderesrepublik Deutschland in Bonn, Germany. Spanning 500 years and comprising 500 objects, the exhibition will showcase some of the most precious treasures in German collections, including paintings, sculpture, drawings, literary and musical works, curios, natural artifacts, and models.

Notable one-person exhibitions include “Edvard Munch: by Himself,” comprising more than 150 of the Norwegian Expressionist’s works, at London’s Royal Academy of Arts; “Francis Bacon: The Portraits” at the Hamburger Kunsthalle; and a show of works by John Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), the Swiss visionary who painted Romantic, erotic, and demonic works, at the Kunsthaus Zurich – all three of which open in October. And an exhibition of Puvis de Chavannes, an underrated painter, will open in November at Le Musee de Picardie in Amiens, France.

The Met’s current exhibition “Matisse: The Fabric of Dreams” ends soon, but you can keep the dream alive by seeing “Matisse: A Second Life.” The exhibition, in association with the Musee du Luxembourg in Paris, runs through December 4 at Denmark’s beautiful Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. It comprises more than 150 works from 1941-54, and explores the last 14 years of the Matisse’s life. And if you liked the Rubens drawing show at the Met last winter, you may want to get to London’s National Gallery this fall to see “Rubens: A Master in the Making,” an exhibition of his paintings which explores the flowering of his artistic genius from pupil to master.

Finally, if the Guggenheim’s fall blockbuster “Russia!” merely whets your appetite, you may want to travel north to the Art Gallery of Ontario’s “Catherine the Great: Arts for the Empire – Masterpieces from the State Hermitage Museum, Russia.” The exhibition will feature more than 200 of Catherine’s objects, including the magnificent Romanov Coronation Coach.