This large print of Luncheonette—Butte, Montana was shown in The Photographs of Robert Frank, the important exhibition of Frank’s work which opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1969 and traveled to four other venues through 1971. The exhibition celebrated the publication of the 1969 edition of The Americans by Aperture and was curated by Aperture’s Michael Hoffman, also an adjunct curator at the Museum. This was the largest exhibition of Frank’s work to date, and was drawn almost exclusively from The Americans. According to Frank authority Sarah Greenough, the exhibition was notable for the size and quality of the prints. She writes: “Printed by Frank and the photographer Sid Kaplan, these photographs were larger than those he had made for his 1962 exhibition at MoMA and even more lush. Because of their size, the graphic strength of these images became far more apparent, as details that were lost in the approximately 4-by-7-inch or 8-by-5-inch reproductions in the book assumed much greater prominence and authority and were often transformed into bold, abstract forms. In addition, the luminosity and the sense that light was emanating from within the images was greatly magnified” (Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans, p. 317).