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Following 'The Family of Man' World Tour. Behind the scenes of a traveling exhibition

C²DH (signed nschon for the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History; PhD-research dispatch by Emilia Sánchez González) Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH), University of Luxembourg 2025 Tier 2 Accessed 2026-05-10 View source ↗

Citation

C²DH, University of Luxembourg. “Following ‘The Family of Man’ World Tour. Behind the scenes of a traveling exhibition.” C²DH news, 3 March 2025 (modified 16 October 2025). URL: https://www.uni.lu/c2dh-en/news/following-the-family-of-man-world-tour/. Direct fetch 2026-05-10 (cache /.scratch/c2dh-following-fom-tour.html, 184 KB, HTTP 200). Author byline: posted by nschon for C²DH; the article body is a first-person research dispatch from the FoMLEG project’s PhD researcher Emilia Sánchez González reporting on her archival research at the National Archives (NARA) and elsewhere.

Tier justification

Tier 2: institutional research-dispatch from the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH), University of Luxembourg, written by an active PhD researcher within the FoMLEG project funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR). The article is a primary-voice account of archival research on the FoM tour at NARA RG 306 (USIA records). It does not constitute peer-reviewed scholarship but it is institutional research communication from the project that has direct primary-archive access to USIS field-post tour-circulation files. Down-tier individual claims to Tier-3 if a credibility judge requires; promotion to Tier-1 requires the underlying NARA folder identifiers and is therefore impossible from this article alone (which does not give them).

Relevance

Adds three specific contributions to the world-tour research:

  1. A new tour-aggregate scope figure: “over 150 cities” — verbatim: “planning its national and international itinerary to over 150 cities”. This is larger than the long-circulating “91 venues” figure (Wikipedia, derivative literature) and the “120 museums” figure (Cuartoscuro 2014). It is also larger than the “69 different exhibition locations” figure (one Spanish-language web source). The article does not anchor the 150-cities figure to a specific NARA folder.
  2. Direct confirmation that the C²DH FoMLEG team has been working at NARA on the USIS tour-circulation files, with named research methodology (correspondence with MoMA, USIS field-post reports). This raises the probability of forthcoming Tier-1 publications from the FoMLEG team.
  3. Direct attestation of Beirut, Lebanon, 1958 as a tour stop — the article reproduces an exhibition poster image with the caption “Exhibition poster for ‘The Family of Man’ in Beirut, Lebanon, 1958.” Beirut was already in the tour-list scaffolding (src-wikipedia-fom-tour-list mentions it as part of Copy 5’s salvage origin), and the C²DH article’s first-person research dispatch now anchors Beirut 1958 at Tier-2 with image evidence.

Key excerpts / pages

Direct fetch 2026-05-10 (cache /.scratch/c2dh-following-fom-tour.html). Verbatim, from the article body as confirmed by direct cache grep of HTML body content:

  • Tour scope (“150 cities” figure): “planning its national and international itinerary to over 150 cities” (article body). Note: this is in addition to the article’s reuse of the “9 million visitors” figure: “the exhibition fulfilled its expectations, attracting over 9 million visitors and earning it the accolade of ‘the most visited photographic exhibition in history.’” The “9 million” and the “150 cities” figures appear in the same paragraph cluster. The article does not say which copy(ies) the 150-cities figure refers to — the article’s framing (“its eight-year world tour”) suggests the aggregate USIA tour as a whole.

  • Tour reach (regions): “displayed in Africa, Asia, and Latin America” and (paraphrased from the article body) the eight-year tour following the MoMA premiere.

  • Beirut: “Exhibition poster for ‘The Family of Man’ in Beirut, Lebanon, 1958.” (image caption). The same image is reproduced as the article’s lead thumbnail (FOM-BEIRUT-cropped.jpg).

  • NARA paragraph (verbatim from cache): “My journey came to a close at the National Archives, where I would dive into the sea of reports conducted by the United States Information Service (USIS). Established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower for foreign diplomacy during the Cold War, the USIS operated out of U.S. embassies worldwide. They hoped that by incorporating ‘The Family of Man’ into their cultural program, international audiences would associate the humanist and peaceful values of the exhibition with the United States. For this end, they took to organizing a World Tour and providing detailed reports of its successes, failures, and influence abroad.”

  • MoMA correspondence: the article describes (paraphrased) the FoMLEG researcher’s work with MoMA International Program correspondence, “communicating by mail with the over 250 photographers (or their agencies) included in the show” — note this “250 photographers” figure differs from Steichen’s frequently-cited “273 photographers” / “503 photographs”. The 250 vs 273 discrepancy is not resolved in the article.

  • What the article does NOT name (per direct cache grep 2026-05-10): Cuba, Havana, Sri Lanka, Ceylon, Colombo, Indonesia, Jakarta, Philippines, Manila, Burma, Yangon, Rangoon. The C²DH article focuses on the European/Beirut/U.S. archive trail and does not name any specific South Asian or Southeast Asian venue beyond the Lebanon (Beirut) image.

Notes

  • Direct fetch 2026-05-10 (cache /.scratch/c2dh-following-fom-tour.html, 184 KB, HTTP 200). The article body was retrieved successfully; the JSON-LD schema at the head of the page confirms publication date 2025-03-03T13:28:31+00:00 and modification date 2025-10-16T06:48:19+00:00.
  • The “150 cities” figure adds a seventh distinct value to the headline-aggregate dispute: 91 venues / 37 countries (Wikipedia derivative, Turner 2012); 9M / 61 countries / 91 venues (O’Brian 2008); 9M / 69 countries / 6 USIA copies (Córdova 2013); 10M / 10 copies (CNA Luxembourg education); 91 venues / 38 countries (Polish Wikipedia); 120 museums (Cuartoscuro 2014); 150+ cities / 9M / 250 photographers (this article). No single primary archival source has yet anchored any of these figures to a NARA RG 306 master tour log.
  • What this source DOES anchor at Tier 2:
    • The C²DH FoMLEG project’s active NARA RG 306 archival research (named institutional voice).
    • Beirut, Lebanon, 1958 as a tour stop (image-evidence caption).
    • The “150 cities” figure as the FoMLEG project’s institutional scope estimate.
  • What this source does NOT anchor:
    • Any specific Cuban, Sri Lankan, Indonesian, Philippine, or Burmese venue.
    • The exact total number of cities (the article rounds “over 150”).
    • The NARA folder identifier for the underlying tour-circulation files.
  • Promotion path: wait for FoMLEG project’s peer-reviewed publications by Emilia Sánchez González and the C²DH/CNA team. The 2025–2027 publication window per the FoMLEG project page (src-c2dh-fomleg) is when Tier-1-equivalent venue lists are most likely to appear.
  • Cross-reference: src-c2dh-fomleg (Tier-2 — project page); src-c2dh-fomleg-lasting-legacy (Tier-3 — institutional announcement); src-cna-education (Tier-2 — nine-country sample); src-turner-2012-politics-attention (Tier-2 — “37 countries / 7.5 million” anchor); src-obrian-2008-nuclear-family-of-man (Tier-2 — “9M / 61 countries”); src-cordova-2013-steichen-retratos-familia (Tier-2 — “9M / 69 countries / 6 copies”); research/world-tour.md §3, §10.
  • Perspective: institutional research-communication from the active research project. The article is a research-process dispatch (“My journey came to a close at the National Archives…”) rather than a finalised scholarly claim. It is the most current institutional voice on the world tour available in 2026, but it is not yet peer-reviewed.
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