The Family of Man — CNA Luxembourg educational portal
Citation
Centre national de l’audiovisuel (CNA), Luxembourg. “The Family of Man, the book of humanity.” Educational portal accompanying the permanent installation at Clervaux Castle. Accessed 2026-04-29. https://www.thefamilyofman.education/en/historical-context/the-family-of-man-the-book-of-humanity
Relevance
The CNA is the institutional custodian of the original prints of The Family of Man, permanently installed at Clervaux Castle since 1994. Its educational portal is an institutional Tier-1 source and is one of the places that publishes a count of “37 themes” for the exhibition’s thematic organization — conflicting with UNESCO’s (2003) figure of 32. Re-verification 2026-04-29 surfaced substantial additional content on the international tour: the USIA-commissioning attribution, the multi-copy operational model (“ten copies sent to nearly 160 towns”), per-copy logistics (1.5 tonnes / 23 crates / 6 days to install), an attendance figure of “nearly 10 million,” a 1955–1964 touring frame, and four geo-located image captions for tour stops in Guatemala City (1955), Tokyo (1956), Johannesburg (1958), and Moscow (1959).
Key excerpts / pages
Themes and curatorial framing:
- Themes explicitly named (not exhaustive): “love, childbirth, work, family, education, childhood, war, peace.”
- “37 themes like a photo-essay about human development and cycles of life.”
- “Steichen approached the exhibition like an editor of illustrated magazines.”
- “a linear route … different sizes of prints displayed at different levels in the room and sometimes removed from the walls to be set on the floor or hung from the ceiling.”
- Sandburg, quoted as: “There is one man in the world and his name is All man.” (The CNA site reproduces a shortened form; the longer attested opening lines are found quoted separately in press and secondary literature.)
- Steichen quoted: “[The Family of Man] was conceived as a mirror of the universal elements and emotions in the everydayness of life – as a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world.” (matches the MoMA June 21, 1955 press release)
USIA commissioning and tour structure (captured 2026-04-29):
- USIA attribution: “Commissioned by the USIA (United States Information Agency), an American governmental unit created during the Cold War to promote a positive image of the United States in front of the Russian propaganda, the exhibition traveled.”
- Multi-copy circulation logistics: “Between 1955 and 1964, the exhibition became itinerant and toured the world visiting numerous countries as India, Russia, France, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mexico, Germany, Japan, Australia… in the form of ten copies with minor changes sent to nearly 160 towns. Each of the copies was weighing one tonne and a half, was packed in twenty-three crates and required more than six days to be mounted/installed.”
- Attendance: “nearly 10 million visitors came in search of not only a one moment capture but to witness the whole humanity.”
- Tour frame: 1955–1964 (this page’s framing; conflicts with both
src-cna-collections-eng-family-of-man’s 1962 end-date andsrc-cna-edu-steichen-bio’s 1965 end-date — seeresearch/world-tour.md§4).
Tour-stop image captions (verbatim, captured 2026-04-29):
- “Installation view of the exhibition ‘The Family of Man’ (travelling exhibition organized by MoMA, NY) in Guatemala, Guatemala City, Palacio Protocolo, August 24 through September 18, 1955.”
- Tokyo, Takashimaya Department Store, March – April 1956 (caption follows the same MoMA-authored format).
- Johannesburg, Government Pavilion, 30 August – 13 September 1958.
- Moscow, USSR, 1959 (year-only mention — venue and dates not on the caption).
Notes
- Originally accessed 2026-04-19; re-verified 2026-04-29 with substantial additional tour-period content captured. The earlier excerpts (themes count, Steichen quotation, Sandburg shortened form) were confirmed verbatim against the re-fetch.
- The CNA education portal enumerates a partial, illustrative list of themes but does not publish a canonical numbered list of all 37. Until a primary enumeration is confirmed (either from the 1955 catalog’s sequencing or from CNA’s exhibition-room signage), any repo claim of “37 sections with titles X, Y, Z” would be a fabrication.
- The “ten copies / 160 towns” figure is in different units from the secondary-literature “91 venues / 37 countries” carried in the in-repo wiki pages with
verified: false. The two cannot be reconciled without per-copy tour logs (USIA records, NARA RG 306). Do not promote either figure to verified status from this source alone. - The “nearly 10 million” attendance figure conflicts with the in-repo wiki pages’ “9 million” figure (carried with
verified: false). The CNA collections English page also gives “10 million.” Repo should resolve to “approximately ten million” with both anchors cited, until NARA RG 306 settles the figure. - The page’s CNA-authored tone in the USIA-commissioning sentence (“in front of the Russian propaganda”) encodes a framing — the page is institutional/curatorial and inherits a Cold-War lens. The four image captions, by contrast, are MoMA-authored installation-view metadata and are factual, not editorial.
- Country list (“India, Russia, France, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mexico, Germany, Japan, Australia”) is presented as an open-ended sample (“as … …”), not an enumeration. “Zimbabwe” is anachronistic for the 1955–1964 tour period (the country was Southern Rhodesia until 1980); likely a later editorial regularisation, flagged here for clarity.
- Perspective: institutional / curatorial (CNA inherits Steichen’s framing).