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UN SUPUESTO FOTOGRÁFICO: THE FAMILY OF MAN EN BOGOTÁ

Artishock Revista (editorial; project: Edicionesréplica — José Ruiz and Arturo Salazar) Artishock Revista (Latin American contemporary-art editorial), Santiago de Chile / Latin America 2022 Tier 3 Accessed 2026-05-10 View source ↗

Citation

Artishock Revista (editorial). “UN SUPUESTO FOTOGRÁFICO: THE FAMILY OF MAN EN BOGOTÁ.” Artishock Revista, 29 March 2022. Article supports the exhibition Un supuesto fotográfico: The family of man en Bogotá, a project by Edicionesréplica (José Ruiz and Arturo Salazar) at Espacio El Dorado, Bogotá, 19 February – 9 April 2022. Direct fetch 2026-05-10 (cache /.scratch/artishock-fom-bogota.html, HTTP 200, 280 116 bytes).

Tier justification

Tier 3: editorial article in a Latin-American contemporary-art magazine, supporting the curatorial frame of a 2022 commercial-gallery exhibition. Artishock Revista is the major Spanish-language contemporary-art editorial across Latin America (founded 2008, based in Santiago de Chile), with editorial standards and named editorial staff but not academic peer review. The article’s value here is documentary: it explicitly attributes its Copy-4 itinerary to “el registro de circulación de la exposición en los archivos del MoMa” (the exhibition’s circulation register in the MoMA archives) — i.e., it claims to draw on a primary archival source (MoMA’s tour-circulation logs in the MoMA Archives) that the present project has not opened. The Tier-3 designation reflects the fact that we are seeing the MoMA-archive content through Artishock’s editorial lens, not the archive directly. Promote individual claims to Tier-2 only when the underlying MoMA Archives folder is opened in a future round.

Relevance

The most-detailed published Spanish-language account of The Family of Man’s Copy-4 South-American leg (1957–1958) that has been opened in any session of this project. The article frames the exhibition as a Cold-War USIA cultural-diplomacy instrument deployed under multiple Latin American military regimes (Batista in Cuba; Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela; Rojas Pinilla in Colombia) and gives a coherent itinerary for the Copy-4 South-American circulation:

  • Cuba (Havana): Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, March – April 1957, under Fulgencio Batista’s military government.
  • Venezuela (Caracas): Universidad Central [de Venezuela], 5–30 July 1957, under Marcos Pérez Jiménez’s military regime.
  • Colombia (Bogotá): planned for the Feria Internacional de Bogotá (Bogotá International Fair) but never publicly displayed — the Rojas Pinilla regime fell in May 1957 and the post-junta austerity programme cancelled the Fair; the 23 crates remained in storage for three months before shipment to Chile.
  • Chile (Santiago): presented under the Carlos Ibáñez del Campo government; the article notes that the politician Jorge Alessandri later used a Family of Man image in his 1958 presidential campaign.
  • Uruguay (Montevideo): subsequently exhibited (no further Uruguayan detail in the article body).
  • Australia, Laos, Indonesia: subsequent Pacific / Southeast-Asian leg of Copy 4.

The article carries a notable curatorial framing: the Bogotá venue identification is “un supuesto fotográfico” — a supposed photographic exhibition — because the Bogotá public never saw the show. The 23 crates remained sealed in storage during what would have been the Bogotá display period.

Key excerpts / pages

Direct fetch 2026-05-10 (cache /.scratch/artishock-fom-bogota.html). Verbatim from the article body:

  • Copy structure / itinerary (verbatim): “Tras culminar la exhibición en el MoMa, la Agencia de Información de Estados Unidos (U.S.I.A.) organizó la itinerancia global de la muestra. Se realizaron cuatro copias idénticas de la exposición, además de la versión original que circuló por Estados Unidos. La primera copia se presentó en varias ciudades europeas entre 1955 y 1962; la segunda se exhibió en Guatemala y México en 1955 y luego estuvo en India, Oriente Medio y el sur de África; la tercera circuló por Europa hasta 1965 cuando fue donada al gobierno de Luxemburgo para una exhibición permanente; la cuarta viajó entre 1957 y 1958 a Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, y luego se exhibió en Australia, Laos e Indonesia.”

  • Caracas venue and dates (verbatim): “En junio de 1957, *The family of man llega a Venezuela después de su paso por el Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana en la Cuba dominada por el dictador Fulgencio Batista. En Caracas, la Universidad Central alojó la muestra entre el 5 y el 30 de julio. Para mediados de 1957, Venezuela seguía bajo el régimen de Marcos Pérez Jiménez, quien era apoyado por el gobierno estadounidense por sus políticas anticomunistas y sus proyectos de extracción petrolera. De acuerdo con el registro de circulación de la exposición en los archivos del MoMa, luego de su corta estadía en Caracas la exposición viajó a Bogotá; esta sería la cuarta exhibición de The family of man bajo un régimen militar latinoamericano, el de Rojas Pinilla.”*

  • Bogotá storage / never-displayed (verbatim): “Después de salir de Caracas, *The family of man quedó en el limbo. Una de las exhibiciones de fotografía más importantes del siglo XX estuvo en Bogotá, pero nadie la vio; los 23 guacales que transportaban la muestra permanecieron almacenados durante tres meses (posiblemente en los pabellones vacíos de la feria) antes de viajar a Chile para continuar su itinerancia por Suramérica. En Santiago, la exposición fue tan exitosa que el político Jorge Alessandri utilizó una de las fotografías de la muestra como parte de su campaña presidencial, y una constructora adoptó el eslogan de la exposición como lema de la empresa.”*

  • Bogotá political context (verbatim): “Con júbilo, Colombia celebró el 10 de mayo de 1957 la caída de Rojas Pinilla luego de las denominadas ‘Jornadas de mayo’ … Se cancelaron varios proyectos y eventos patrocinados por el Estado, como la Feria Internacional de Bogotá, lugar donde se planeaba exhibir el proyecto de Steichen.”

  • Article-level framing (from og:description): “Teniendo como telón de fondo la guerra fría, ‘The family of man’ fue uno de los principales recursos de la U.S.I.A. para camuflar la política intervencionista del gobierno estadounidense y evitar la expansión del bloque comunista. El proyecto sería utilizado como una pantalla diplomática para cubrir actos de represión y ganar adeptos para el sistema político y social de Estados Unidos.”

  • Crate count corroboration (verbatim): “23 guacales que transportaban la muestra” — independently corroborates the “23 crates” figure that appears in src-cna-education (CNA Luxembourg education portal, “tonelada y media, was packed in twenty-three crates and required more than six days to be mounted/installed”). Two independent sources (Mexican CNA / Luxembourg, and Latin-American Artishock / Colombia) carrying the same crate count is a useful cross-check on the logistical metadata.

Notes

  • Direct fetch 2026-05-10 (cache /.scratch/artishock-fom-bogota.html). The article body was retrieved cleanly; no JavaScript challenge was encountered.
  • Caracas venue identification: “Universidad Central”. The article names “Universidad Central” as the Caracas venue. This is the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), the country’s principal national university, founded 1721, whose 1950s Caracas campus (designed by Carlos Raúl Villanueva) is itself a UNESCO World Heritage Site (2000) — the article does not specify the on-campus building/space. The UCV identification matches the Wikipedia tour-list row (src-wikipedia-fom-tour-list: “Caracas, University of Caracas, July 5–30, 1957”) at venue and date level, with the small discrepancy that the Artishock article gives “5 and 30 July” without specifying inclusive/exclusive bounds; together the two Tier-3 sources converge on 5–30 July 1957 at the Universidad Central de Venezuela.
  • Cuba (Havana) venue identification: “Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes” of Havana. The article names this as the immediately-preceding Copy-4 venue (March–April 1957). Wikipedia tour-list (src-wikipedia-fom-tour-list) gives “Havana, Museo Nacional Palacio de Belas Artes, March 6 – April, 1957” — the two Tier-3 sources converge on the same venue and broad date window with minor formulaic differences (Artishock writes “Bellas Artes”; Wikipedia writes “Belas Artes” — both refer to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the National Museum of Fine Arts of Cuba on Calle Trocadero).
  • MoMA-archives citation (single-sentence, no folder reference): the article writes “De acuerdo con el registro de circulación de la exposición en los archivos del MoMa…” — i.e., it claims the Caracas → Bogotá routing is documented in the MoMA Archives (the project of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, with collections held at MoMA Library / Archives). The article does not give a folder, box, or document number. The MoMA International Program records that would carry the tour-circulation register are at MoMA Archives, NY; the present project has not opened those records (per research/world-tour.md §9). The Artishock claim is therefore a secondary witness to MoMA-archives content.
  • Coherent four-regime narrative (Batista in Cuba; Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela; Rojas Pinilla in Colombia; Ibáñez del Campo in Chile): the article’s Cold-War framing reads the Copy-4 itinerary as a deployment of Family of Man under cooperative anti-communist Latin American military regimes during 1957–1958. This is a strong perspective claim consistent with the established USIA cultural-diplomacy framing in src-turner-2012-politics-attention and src-obrian-2008-nuclear-family-of-man, but the political-deployment angle is sharper than the existing FoMLEG / Turner / O’Brian framings — it is an Artishock editorial reading, not direct from the cited MoMA archive. Treat the regime-naming as Artishock’s editorial framing (well-supported as historical fact, but not documented as USIA strategic intent in any source fetched this round).
  • What this source does NOT carry: the dispersal date of Copy 4 (Wikipedia src-wikipedia-fom-copies-pointer gives 1962); the Copy-4 dispersal location; per-day attendance for any Latin-American venue; the catalogue or printed materials produced for the Caracas / Havana / Santiago / Montevideo / Bogotá-stored stops; the names of MoMA International Program staff handling the Latin-American leg; the names of USIS Caracas / USIS Havana / USIS Bogotá / USIS Santiago / USIS Montevideo officers responsible.
  • Negative findings carried by this source about the issue-#180 target list: Buenos Aires, São Paulo, and Lima are NOT in the Copy-4 itinerary as recorded by this Tier-3 article that explicitly cites the MoMA tour-circulation archive. The article’s enumeration of Copy 4 (“Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, y luego … Australia, Laos e Indonesia”) terminates the South-American sequence at Uruguay (Montevideo). This is consistent with the Wikipedia tour-list (src-wikipedia-fom-tour-list), which also enumerates Copy-4 South-American venues as Cuba → Venezuela → Colombia → Chile → Uruguay and contains no Argentina, Brazil, or Peru entry in any of its Copy-1 / Copy-2 / Copy-4 / Copy-5 tables. The convergent absence of Buenos Aires / São Paulo / Lima across both the Wikipedia tour-list (Tier-3, uncited at row level) and Artishock’s MoMA-archive-cited summary (Tier-3) is the strongest available negative evidence that The Family of Man did not stop in those three cities during the original 1955–c.1962 USIA tour. The post-1992 restored-prints touring wave (src-unesco-mow-2003: “Toulouse, Tokyo, Hiroshima”) may have added later venues; that is a separate question.
  • Cross-reference: src-wikipedia-fom-tour-list (Tier-3 — convergent Copy-4 itinerary at row level); src-wikipedia-fom-copies-pointer (Tier-3 — Copy-4 1957–1962 / dispersed 1962); src-cordova-2013-steichen-retratos-familia (Tier-2 — Mexico City stop on Copy 2); src-sandeen-2015-guatemala (Tier-2 — Guatemala City stop on Copy 2, paired institutionally with Mexico City); research/world-tour.md §3, §5 — Latin-American leg discussion.
  • Perspective: Latin-American contemporary-art critical / postcolonial. The article frames The Family of Man primarily as a Cold-War USIA propaganda apparatus deployed in collaboration with Latin-American military dictatorships, with the Bogotá storage incident standing as a politically resonant case of the show’s non-arrival under the post-Rojas-Pinilla cultural-policy retrenchment.
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