Much Here Is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U.S. Bicentennial
Ted Wathen, Former Company Houses, Jenkins, Letcher County, Kentucky, 1975, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Endowment for the Arts, 1983.63.1614, © 1975, Ted Wathen
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 offer an expansive and evocative portrait of America in the 1970s and early 1980s. Explore selected images from photography surveys that document people and places in the United States from the 19th century to the years before and after the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976.
Description
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 1983, 1,000 photographs by NEA grant recipients were transferred to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Among the material received by the museum were prints from thirteen of the survey projects.
Much Here Is Beautiful brings together, for the first time, 225 photographs that place the Bicentennial images within the broader legacy of federal survey photography dating back to the 19th century and its lasting impact on generations of artists. The exhibition's title comes from a line in the poem "American Journal" by Robert Hayden, who was the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (known today as the U.S. Poet Laureate) from 1976 to 1978. The 1970s surveys span four geographic sections of the country—Northeast, South, Midwest, and West. This exhibition is the culmination of years of research, drawing on the museum’s rich photography holdings and uncovering U.S. Bicentennial survey photographs held in collections nationwide, revealing new discoveries and previously unseen works.
A fully illustrated catalogue, published by Radius Books in partnership with SAAM, will be available for purchase ($65) in the museum’s store and online.
Much Here Is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U.S. Bicentennial is organized by John Jacob, the McEvoy Family Senior Curator for Photography and Krystle Stricklin, assistant curator of photography.
Visiting Information
Events
Publications
Credit
Much Here is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the US Bicentennial is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Major support is provided by the Elizabeth Broun Curatorial Endowment, Ronald Costell, Nion McEvoy and Leslie Berriman, the Charles Robertson Exhibitions Endowment, the Bernie Stadiem Endowment Fund, and Trellis Charitable Fund. Generous support is provided by Michael Abrams and Sandra Stewart, the Joanne and Richard Brodie Exhibitions Endowment, Crown Equipment Exhibitions Endowment, Daniel W. Hamilton, the Margery and Edgar Masinter Exhibitions Fund, Amy Sarah McCombs, Minami Legacy Fund for the Arts, MurthyNAYAK Foundation, the David and Anne Sellin Exhibitions Endowment, and Lucille and Richard Spagnuolo.