The Family of Man: Pre-Installation Tour to Toulouse, Tokyo, and Hiroshima (1992–1994)
Citation
Centre national de l’audiovisuel (CNA). “The Family of Man: A Greater Resonance More Than Ever Before.” thefamilyofman.education. © 2021 CNA. URL: https://www.thefamilyofman.education/en/historical-context/the-family-of-man-a-greater-resonance-more-than-ever-before. Accessed 2026-04-30.
Relevance
Documents the final pre-Clervaux tour of the restored Family of Man collection: Toulouse (France), Tokyo, and Hiroshima (Japan) in 1992 and winter 1993–94. This second world tour — 38 years after the original 1955–1962 USIA-sponsored global tour — was organized by the CNA as part of the restoration and reinstallation process leading to the June 1994 permanent installation at Clervaux Castle. The Hiroshima venue (which welcomed “each day up to three thousand persons” per the CNA page) is consequential for the reception history. The CNA’s institutional framing presents the 1992–94 second-wave tour as a humanist re-circulation; this is one frame among several. The October-axis reading (src-sekula-1981, src-phillips-1982-judgment-seat) and the Cold War cultural-diplomacy reading (src-stimson-2006, src-turner-2013) treat The Family of Man’s recirculation in Hiroshima as a contested institutional act, not a neutral re-staging — the same plates that closed Section 40 BOMB at MoMA in 1955 returning to the city most associated with nuclear warfare in 1992 is itself a curatorial choice that the critical literature does not read as self-evidently redemptive. Cross-reference to src-sandeen-1995 (Chapter: “The family of man on the move”) for the historical-contextual frame; both readings are documented elsewhere in the bench.
Key excerpts / pages
- Access status (2026-04-30): The thefamilyofman.education CNA page was fetched successfully. The fetch returned:
- Verbatim, re-fetched 2026-05-01 (corrected per grounding judge on PR #95 — the earlier draft inverted the page’s clause order and inserted the connective “following” which does not appear on the page): “After a last showing in Toulouse, France, in Tokyo and in Hiroshima, Japan which welcomed each day up to three thousand persons eager to admire the collection, the exhibition permanently opened at Clervaux Castle in June 1994.”
- Verbatim: “In 1964, at the end of the collection’s journey around the world, the American government presented it as gift to the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg.”
- Steichen quote (verbatim, in Luxembourgish): “Ech sinn e lëtzebuerger Jong” (“I am a boy from Luxembourg”), attributed to a meeting with Grand Duchess Charlotte at the White House in 1963.
- Site attribution: © 2021 CNA, designed by Cropmark.
- The UNESCO Memory of the World page (re-fetched 2026-05-01) independently corroborates the three-city tour. Verbatim from the UNESCO page: “not counting the 50,000 who went to see the restored collection in Toulouse, Tokyo and Hiroshima in 1992 and in the winter of 1993-1994”. The earlier draft of this entry paraphrased that sentence and labelled it verbatim — corrected per grounding judge on PR #95.
- Specific press coverage of the Toulouse, Tokyo, or Hiroshima venues NOT found or fetched in this round. Per-venue catalogs or press materials for those showings NOT located.
Notes
- The three-city tour (Toulouse, Tokyo, Hiroshima) is confirmed by two independently fetched sources in this session: the CNA thefamilyofman.education page and the UNESCO MoW page. Both fetches are documented above.
- “in 1992 and in the winter of 1993-1994” (UNESCO phrasing, re-fetched 2026-05-01) and “in Toulouse, France, in Tokyo and in Hiroshima, Japan” (CNA phrasing, re-fetched 2026-05-01) are the verbatim sources; neither specifies the order of cities or exact dates of each venue.
- The per-venue press coverage for Toulouse, Tokyo, and Hiroshima would require: (a) French regional press for Toulouse (likely La Dépêche du Midi or similar); (b) Japanese national press for Tokyo and Hiroshima (Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun, Chugoku Shimbun for Hiroshima specifically). None of these were searched or found in this round.
- The tour dates “1992 and winter 1993–1994” are the most specific confirmed from fetched sources. The task brief’s claim of a “1992-94 second-wave international tour” is confirmed.
- Cross-reference to
src-cna-clervaux-1994-permanent-installation: the installation this tour preceded. - Cross-reference to
src-unesco-motw-fom-nomination: corroborating source for the tour and visitor figures. - Cross-reference to
src-sandeen-1995: the scholarly frame for the exhibition’s tour history. verified: false: Page fetched successfully; verbatim quotes extracted. However, per-venue press materials for the three tour stops not located. The entry documents the tour fact, not the per-venue reception. Markverified: truewhen per-venue press or catalogs are added.