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

To celebrate the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976, the milestone anniversary of the country’s founding, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) created a grant program to fund a series of regional photographic projects that documented both people and places across the country. 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. ​

In 1981 the NEA transferred their incomplete archive of nearly 1,000 survey photographs to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. After years of extensive research, this exhibition brings these surveys together for the first time and examines this decisive moment of federal support for photography that shaped a generation of artists. ​

​Much Here is Beautiful offers a history of federal survey photography, beginning in the 19th century and leading up to the years just before and after the Bicentennial. The 1970s surveys span four geographic sections of the country—Northeast, South, Midwest, and West. The exhibition's title comes from a line in the poem "American Journal" by Robert Hayden, who was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 1976 to 1978.   

A fully illustrated catalogue, published by Radius Books in partnership with SAAM, will be available for purchase in the museum’s store and online.

Much Here is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U.S. Bicentennial is organized by John Jacob, McEvoy Family Senior Curator of Photography and Krystle Stricklin, assistant curator of photography.