Only now can I see the tracks of my longing so clearly. When the idea hit me– visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art one hundred times and see what happens– I was standing in one of its Impressionist galleries minding my own business. My eyes flew over Monet’s poppy field and under his lavender-tinted clouds.

Before my 100 days began, I canvased each numbered gallery on the Met’s official floor plan known as “The Map.” Six panels folded behind a red, rectangular cover roughly the size of a paperback. In the upper left-hand corner was “THE MET,” the museum’s famous six-letter logo, stacked in serif, just one inch high.

As rain beat down, visitors quick-stepped their approach from all directions. A couple in bright jackets bobbed to the top of the limestone stairs. I scurried up behind them. We all wanted in. Sibyls, darkened at the museum’s roofline, looked like raptors waiting out a storm. After passing through the glass entrance doors and navigating the “Here I am- am I all here?” logjam, I crossed the Great Hall for an admission ticket.

A metal door in the corner with an exit push bar was the giveaway. Some time ago, this space had simply been a pass-through. Later, the door had been painted the same yellow as the walls and the room had been given a gallery number. Its lemony paint job had dulled over time and now had a forgotten tinge.

Luxury items were on display in the windows of a shop on Isle Saint Louis. This 18th century French marchand mercier fantasy was courtesy of the European Decorative Arts Department. Curators had crossed the window dressing line. The mock shop even had a sign that had been made for the occasion. Its bracket was period.

At one entrance to the Japanese galleries is a room where ikebana demonstrations sometimes take place. Mahogany paneling covered the walls with a formality usually reserved for modern boardrooms. Several abstract works on paper, corporate in calling, hung around the room.

Inside a 15th century Florentine palazzo, Madonnas were dispatched to the bedroom; family portraits hung in the public rooms up front. A gallery of Florentine painting and sculptural relief exhibited the distinction. On one side of the room split by opposite entranceways, panel paintings depicted an aristocracy, often in its youthful prime.

I arrived at my gallery in the American Wing with squishy shoes and a foul weather attitude. Its marble floor sounded my defeat. Adding insult to injury, a bright yellow sofa shined in my direction. A piece of early American furniture, circa 1820, mocked my waterlogged arrival.

When I realized that I had drawn an Egyptian gallery, I began to dread my visit. The museum was more or less my trusted comfort zone, frictionless and predictable. Now it wasn’t. I felt remarkably ill-prepared when it came to this art, which really isn’t “art,” but rather a visual intersection of life, language and religion.

Two rather large engravings hung side by side in a snug alcove at the rear of the Chinese galleries. Incised and inked plates had produced impressively detailed prints with the thinnest of lines. On a small adjacent wall, four textile roundels the size of dinner plates hung two over two.

A Palladian-inspired facade announced the American Wing across a sculpture court. I wondered if the department had thought it needed some masonry oomph to match its ancient peers. Weeks later I learned from a placard that this elegant and ordered limestone exterior first fronted the early United States Branch Bank on Wall Street.

The closet-sized study gallery was quiet on a Saturday afternoon. “Study” had cleared the room. Faced with glass shelves crawling with objects, wall to wall and floor to ceiling, I had a quick inspiration after entering. What if I let the room describe itself? Label by label, top to bottom shelf, I would work counterclockwise around the room.