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

In the Midwest, John Margolies photographed roadside motels, diners and gas stations, and Joel Meyerowitz worked around the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. Both belonged to a national project: around 1976 the National Endowment for the Arts funded more than 70 regional photo surveys, shot by over 200 photographers.

The Smithsonian received 1,000 of the prints in 1983, and this is the first time the surveys are shown together. The 225 photographs are grouped as Northeast, South, Midwest and West. Lee Friedlander covers factories and workers in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and Robert Townsend Jones Jr. shows Beale Street in Memphis, printed from negatives found during the curators' research. Work by Carleton Watkins and Timothy O'Sullivan sets it in the line of 19th-century federal survey photography.

Margolies shot motels and diners in the 1970s, which is roughly what your camera roll of this year's brunches will look like in fifty years. Admission is free, daily 11:30 to 19:00, and the catalogue is $65 in the museum store.