Exploring Cultural Diversity through Art: A Guide to International Art in the Best Museums in the US

I have a confession: before moving to America, I was not really a museum person. In Singapore, I visited the National Gallery once and the ArtScience Museum a couple of times (mostly because Sophie wanted to see the teamLab exhibitions). Art museums felt like places for people who knew what they were looking at, and I — an advertising guy who spent most of his creative energy on PowerPoint decks — was not one of those people.

Then I visited the Met in New York on a work trip, and something shifted. I walked into the Asian Art wing and found myself standing in front of a Wu Guanzhong painting, thousands of miles from home, and it felt like the most unexpected homecoming. Here was this Vietnamese-born, Singapore-raised, California-living guy, staring at a Chinese painting in an American museum, and suddenly art made sense to me in a way it never had before.

I think museums in America are at their best when they show you how connected the world really is. And as an expat, that perspective hits differently.

Wu Guanzhong at the Met — Where East Meets West

Wu Guanzhong is considered one of the most important Chinese painters of the 20th century. He blended traditional Chinese painting techniques with Western abstract expressionism — bold brushstrokes, vibrant colors, a beautiful tension between form and space. You can find some of his masterpieces at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) in New York.

But the Met is enormous — I have to admit, I got slightly lost trying to find the Asian Art section. The museum also houses incredible collections from African, Islamic, and Indigenous cultures. You could spend days there and still not see everything. I spent about four hours and barely scratched the surface. My advice: pick a few sections that speak to you and go deep, rather than trying to sprint through the whole thing.

Yayoi Kusama at The Broad — Art That Makes You Feel Something

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist whose work I actually knew about before visiting — her polka-dotted installations are all over Instagram. But seeing the Infinity Mirrored Room at The Broad in Los Angeles in person is a completely different experience. You step into this mirrored room filled with lights, and it genuinely feels like floating in infinite space.

Sophie was mesmerized. I was too, honestly. It is one of those rare art experiences that does not require any art knowledge to appreciate — it just hits you. The Broad is free (though you need timed tickets), which I think is wonderful. Art should be accessible.

Frida Kahlo at MoMA — Pain as Art

Frida Kahlo's work is something I came to late, and I wish I had discovered her earlier. Her self-portraits are raw, unflinching, deeply personal — she painted her physical pain, her heartbreak, her identity as a Mexican woman, with a surrealist style that makes everything feel both dreamlike and devastatingly real.

MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York houses her famous "Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair." Being in the same room as a Kahlo painting, a Picasso, and a Warhol all within a few minutes of each other — I think that is when I understood what major museums offer that books and screens cannot. The physical presence of art matters.

El Anatsui at the Smithsonian — Beauty from Discarded Things

El Anatsui is a Ghanaian artist (based in Nigeria for decades) who creates massive, shimmering sculptures from discarded materials — bottle caps, aluminum strips, ordinary things transformed into something extraordinary. His work is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. — a museum that is on my list for the next time I am on the East Coast.

I have seen photos and videos of his pieces, and what moves me is what they represent: taking what the world throws away and making it beautiful. Coming from Vietnam, where resourcefulness is a way of life (nothing gets wasted), I connect with that ethos immediately. It is art, but it is also a philosophy.

Monet at the Art Institute of Chicago — The One Everyone Knows

OK, Claude Monet needs no introduction. But seeing his "Water Lilies" series in person at the Art Institute of Chicago is one of those bucket-list art experiences that actually lives up to the hype. The colors, the light, the way the paintings almost shimmer — photographs do not capture it.

I visited on a weekday and the galleries were quiet. Standing alone in front of a massive Water Lilies painting, I understood why people travel across the world to see these. :)

Vermeer at the Frick — Quiet Perfection

Johannes Vermeer painted quiet domestic scenes with a mastery of light that feels almost photographic. The Frick Collection in New York has some of his most famous works. I have not made it to the Frick yet — it is on my list for my next New York trip. But I have seen enough Vermeer reproductions to know that there is a stillness to his paintings that I find calming in a way I did not expect. After 18 years in advertising — a career built on noise, urgency, and deadlines — I am drawn to art that celebrates silence and ordinary moments.

What Museums Have Taught This Non-Art-Guy

I think the biggest surprise of my American experience has been discovering that I actually love museums. Not because I have become some kind of art expert — I am very much still a student. But because museums, especially the ones with strong international collections, remind me that culture is borderless. A Vietnamese guy can stand in front of a Nigerian sculpture in an American museum and feel something deeply human. That is not nothing.

From my experience, if you are an expat feeling disconnected from culture (yours or your new country's), museums are a surprisingly good remedy. They are places where the world comes to you.

What museum experience has surprised you the most? I am always looking for recommendations.

Cheers,

Chandler