Dugan Aguilar’s photographs defy colonial narratives, capturing instead an unwavering Indigenous presence and the dynamic cultural practices of his community and beyond. From grand California landscapes to quiet images of gatherings, ceremonies, and basket weaving, Born of the Bear Dance illuminates profound, and often intimate, moments of contemporary Native life.

The selection of Aguilar's images included in this volume draws on his extensive photographic archive, now housed at the Oakland Museum of California, the co-publishers of this first monograph on the artist's work. This comprehensive plate section is framed by a biography of the artist, compiled from excerpts of his own words as well as oral histories with family members and close friends. Newly commissioned essays by Dustin Aguilar, the artist's son; Jennifer Bates; Theresa L. Harlan; Drew Heath Johnson, the curator of Aguilar's retrospective exhibition at the Oakland Museum; Chag Lowry; Rico Miranda; and Meredith Patute offer insights into who Aguilar was as a father, photographer, and community member and new perspectives on his artistic legacy.

Much Here Is Beautiful brings together, for the first time, photography surveys commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in the years surrounding the 1976 US Bicentennial. Inspired by the legacy of the Farm Security Administration’s photographs during the Great Depression, the NEA envisioned these surveys as an expansive and evocative portrait of the nation during a pivotal chapter in its history. Over the course of eight years, though no surveys were funded in 1975, the NEA funded seventy-two photo surveys, yielding thousands of pictures taken by over 200 photographers. In 1981, the NEA transferred their incomplete archive of nearly 1,000 survey photographs to the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM), including prints from thirteen of the survey projects. Much Here Is Beautiful is the culmination of years of research, drawing on SAAM’s rich photography holdings and uncovering US Bicentennial survey photographs held in collections nationwide, revealing new discoveries and previously unseen works. 

This volume is a companion to SAAM's exhibition of the same name, and includes histories for all seventy-two surveys, in addition to hundreds of beautiful reproductions from many of them. This comprehensive index is bracketed by newly commissioned essays by Andy Grundberg; Lindsay Harris; and John P. Jacob and Krystle Stricklin, the exhibition's curators. Collectively, the writing illuminates the history and legacy of these NEA surveys, while offering contemporary contexts in which to consider these projects and the images that emerged from them today.