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Tracing the Legacy of Edward Steichen: A Glocal Approach to the International Reception and National Heritagisation of the 'Family of Man' Exhibition (FoMLEG)

Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH), University of Luxembourg 2024 Tier 2 Accessed 2026-05-09 View source ↗

Citation

Fickers, Andreas, Claude Ewert, and Emilia Sanchez Gonzalez. “Tracing the Legacy of Edward Steichen: A Glocal Approach to the International Reception and National Heritagisation of the ‘Family of Man’ Exhibition (FoMLEG).” Research project page. Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH), University of Luxembourg. Announced October 2024. URL: https://www.uni.lu/c2dh-en/research-projects/fomleg/ (directly fetched 2026-05-09 — see Notes).

Tier justification

Tier 2: institutional research project of the C²DH (Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History), University of Luxembourg, funded by the FNR (Fonds National de la Recherche, Luxembourg). The C²DH is the national centre for digital and contemporary history in Luxembourg and the institutional host of the FoMLEG research programme, which is specifically dedicated to The Family of Man exhibition’s international reception and Luxembourg heritagisation. The project collaborates with the Centre National de l’Audiovisuel (CNA, Tier-1 institution per CREDIBILITY.md). Tier 2 rather than Tier 1 because the project page itself is a research description, not an archival primary source.

Relevance

FoMLEG is the only active multi-year research programme specifically dedicated to The Family of Man’s world tour and its reception history. The project combines visual studies, decolonial studies, public history, and transnational media history to investigate the global tour (1955–1963). Expected outputs include: a PhD dissertation (Ewert on Luxembourg reception), peer-reviewed publications, a graphic novel about Steichen and FoM, and an interactive ‘deep mapping’ website visualising the global circulation. As of January 2025, researchers conducted on-site archival visits to the George Eastman Museum, MoMA, and the U.S. National Archives. This project page is the gateway to future FoMLEG scholarly outputs and the definitive institutional reference for FoM scholarship from the University of Luxembourg.

Key excerpts / pages

Page directly fetched 2026-05-09 (cache file: .scratch/c2dh-fomleg-project-page.html). The HTML body carries the project description verbatim. Quotations below are from the fetched HTML.

  • Page title (verbatim, 2026-05-09): “Tracing the legacy of Edward Steichen: A glocal approach to the international reception and national heritagisation of the ‘Family of Man’ exhibition (FoMLEG).”
  • Yoast SEO metadata (verbatim, 2026-05-09): datePublished: 2024-04-10T07:46:40+00:00; dateModified: 2025-10-16T06:20:44+00:00. The project status taxonomy on the page is active; the project type taxonomy is fnr – luxembourg.
  • Project description, paragraph 1 (verbatim, 2026-05-09): “The photographic heritage linked to Edward Steichen has by now a permanent place in the cultural landscape of Luxembourg. Composed of public and private collections, this heritage is anchored in the history of photography internationally, in Luxembourg’s collective memory and in various cultural institutions and collections in the Grand Duchy. This multilayered and transdisciplinary research project aims to shed light on hitherto underexposed subjects of these collections and to direct its attention towards a twofold exploration: the international reception of the exhibition The Family of Man (FoM) during its world tour between 1955 and 1964 at selected locations and the heritagisation of Edward Steichen’s oeuvre and legacy in the specific cultural and political contexts of Luxembourg and its evolution up until today.”
  • Project method (verbatim, 2026-05-09, paragraph 2): “This research project aims at problematizing the audience response to the travelling exhibition using a glocal history approach: The multilayered and transdisciplinary approach is aimed at enriching the existing scholarship on FoM by combining global, national, and local processes of circulation, translation, and appropriation of photographs in order to retrace and understand the itinerancy of the exhibition and its audience responses. While building on the rich scholarship from the field of the history of photography, visual studies, and exhibition / museum studies, the project shifts the analytical focus to a more comparative perspective, aiming at historicizing processes of ‘encoding’ and ‘decoding’ of meaning at different spaces and places. In framing the FoM as a global media event, we aim to analyse the local performances of the exhibition as ritualised moments of thickened media communication, revealing specific strategies of territorial appropriation of globally circulating messages. The project emphasises the need for a critical reflection on the colonial and post-colonial dimension of FoM by paying more attention to the question of how the exhibition has been received in the Global South.”
  • Methodology (verbatim, 2026-05-09): “Through an interdisciplinary approach, combining visual studies, decolonial studies, intergenerational memory production, translation and reception studies, and transnational media history, the emphasis lies on the analysis of the historical reception as traced through official documents, surveys, press articles as well as installation images. By means of a participatory digital public history approach, first-hand accounts and memories of visitors will be collected and analysed, aiming at a comparative in-depth analysis of the exhibition’s contemporary reception within its respective geographical, cultural, and political contexts.”
  • Outputs (verbatim, 2026-05-09): “Next to academic publications and a PhD dissertation, the project will produce innovative forms and formats of transmedia storytelling, e.g. through the development of a deep mapping visualisation of the global circulation of FoM, combining a traceable itinerary of the exhibition around the world with virtual exhibits of those places of display studied as historical case studies in the project. In addition, a graphic novel will offer a research-based narrative about Steichen and the emergence of FoM as one of the most iconic photograph exhibitions of the 20th century.”

Notes

  • Direct fetch 2026-05-09 (cache: .scratch/c2dh-fomleg-project-page.html). The previously documented verified: false state has been replaced; the project page was successfully retrieved this round and the project description is now quoted verbatim. The earlier “search-result-only” excerpts have been superseded by full body text.
  • The “January 2025 archival visits to Eastman/MoMA/NARA” claim is not in the project page itself; it is in the companion C²DH news articles (src-c2dh-fomleg-world-tour, fetched 2026-05-09; src-c2dh-fomleg-lasting-legacy, fetched 2026-05-09). The current project page (page-published 2024-04-10, last modified 2025-10-16) does not include the January 2025 fieldwork narrative inline.
  • The “1955-1963” world-tour window referenced in earlier search-result snippets is NOT what this page now says; the project page (verbatim 2026-05-09) states “between 1955 and 1964.” The discrepancy with the Lewandowski PDF footnote (which gives 1958–1963 for USIA international touring) is a real one and reflects different definitions of “tour” vs. “international touring” — both are recorded here for transparency.
  • Related C²DH pages NOT fetched this round but returned in search:
    • https://www.uni.lu/c2dh-en/news/following-the-family-of-man-world-tour/ (‘Following the Family of Man World Tour. Behind the scenes of a traveling exhibition’)
    • https://www.uni.lu/c2dh-en/news/contribute-to-the-legacy-of-the-family-of-man-research-project/
    • https://www.uni.lu/c2dh-en/events/70-years-of-the-family-of-man/ (event, May 24, 2025)
  • A future pass should directly fetch the project page to extract the full project description, partner institutions, FNR grant number, and any listed publications.
  • The FoMLEG project’s interactive map and deep-mapping website, once published, should become a primary source entry for the tour itinerary.

Perspective note

This entry uses the FoMLEG project’s own institutional self-description (the project page describes itself in its own terms; the C²DH news articles use phrases like “the only active multi-year research programme specifically dedicated to The Family of Man’s world tour”). FoMLEG is a 2024-launched FNR-funded research programme; as of this entry’s accessed date (2026-04-30), the project has not yet published peer-reviewed outputs of its own (per the project’s own announcements). Future passes should re-evaluate this institutional framing against the published FoMLEG outputs as they appear, and avoid foregrounding FoMLEG’s institutional voice as authoritative until those outputs are in print.

The “January 2025 archival visits to Eastman/MoMA/NARA” claim in the Relevance prose above is sourced from search-result snippets of the companion file src-c2dh-fomleg-world-tour, not from a direct fetch of this project page; the same applies to “Announced October 2024” — neither is a verbatim claim from this URL.

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