The great American experience is about so many things: bluegrass and beaches, snow-covered peaks
and redwood forests, restaurant-loving cities and big open skies.
The USA has made tremendous contributions to the arts. Georgia O'Keeffe's wild landscapes, Robert
Rauschenberg's surreal collages, Alexander Calder's elegant mobiles and Jackson Pollock's drip
paintings have entered the vernacular of 20th-century art. Chicago and New York have become
veritable drawing boards for the great architects of the modern era. And from the soulful blues born in
the Mississippi Delta to the bluegrass of Appalachia and Detroit's Motown sound – plus jazz, funk, hip-
hop, country, and rock and roll – America has invented sounds integral to modern music.