Much Here is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U.S. Bicentennial

From the California coast to the Kansas heartland to the streets of New York City, the photographs in Much Here is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U.S. Bicentennial present an expansive and evocative portrait of America with a focus on the 1970s and early 1980s. The exhibition offers a history of federal survey photography, beginning in the 19th century and leading up to the years just before and after the Bicentennial in 1976, through selected images that document people and places in the United States. 

To celebrate the Bicentennial in 1976, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) created a grant program to fund a series of regional photographic projects spanning across four geographic sections of the country—Northeast, South, Midwest, and West. Inspired by the legacy of the Farm Security Administration’s photographs during the Great Depression, the NEA envisioned these surveys as a new portrait of the nation, during a pivotal chapter in its history. Lasting for six years, the NEA funded more than 70 photo surveys, yielding thousands of pictures taken by more than 200 photographers. ​ 

After years of research, Much Here Is Beautiful brings these surveys together for the first time. Drawing on the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s rich photography holdings and uncovering U.S. Bicentennial survey photographs held in collections nationwide, the exhibition reveals new discoveries and previously unseen works.