The Family of Man in Guatemala
Citation
Sandeen, Eric J. “The Family of Man in Guatemala.” Visual Studies 30, no. 2 (2015): [pages not confirmed this round — body text not accessed]. Special issue: “Cold War Visual Alliances,” guest edited by Sarah Bassnett, Andrea Noble, and Thy Phu. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2015.1024958. Published online 15 May 2015.
Tier justification
Tier 2: peer-reviewed article in Visual Studies (Routledge/Taylor & Francis), published by the International Visual Sociology Association, an established peer-reviewed journal for visual culture scholarship. Author Eric J. Sandeen is also the author of src-sandeen-1995, the canonical book-length study of The Family of Man, establishing his standing as the primary scholarly voice on the exhibition’s tour history.
Relevance
Examines The Family of Man’s stop in Guatemala City (Palacio Protocolo, 24 August – 18 September 1955, fourteen months after the 1954 CIA-backed coup that overthrew the democratically elected Árbenz government). Sandeen reorients the exhibition’s Cold War geography from the familiar East–West axis toward a North–South reading, arguing that placing the show in post-coup Guatemala ‘challenges the limits of Steichen’s humanism’ and raises questions of ‘hereditary, festering colonialism and comprehensive exploitation of indigenous populations.’ The first dedicated scholarly analysis of a specific tour stop outside the U.S. domestic schedule and Moscow.
Key excerpts / pages
- Search-result verbatim (2026-04-30): ‘Placing the exhibition in Guatemala reoriented the show’s Cold War geography and challenged the limits of Steichen’s humanism. Steichen’s orientation was East–West, his purpose to break down what he considered to be a nihilistic binary between the United States and the Soviet Union. A North–South axis brings with it issues of hereditary, festering colonialism and comprehensive exploitation of indigenous populations.’
- Venue and dates confirmed from
research/world-tour.md(fetched prior session, cross-referenced here): Guatemala City, Palacio Protocolo, 24 August – 18 September 1955. - The timing context (search result, 2026-04-30): ‘In Guatemala, the exhibition was shown only fourteen months after a U.S. backed coup had overthrown the democratically-elected government.’
Notes
- Body text NOT consulted in this round. The Tandfonline DOI page is paywalled; full article not opened. All quotations above derive from search-engine excerpts returned in this session (2026-04-30) and should be treated as partial; exact page numbers are unknown.
- Author affiliation: Professor of American Studies, University of Wyoming (not University of New Mexico, which is the press for his 1995 book
src-sandeen-1995). - This article is the most directly relevant scholarly source for the Guatemala City venue. It provides the ‘fourteen months after coup’ framing, which is important context absent from
research/world-tour.md. - The Guatemala City stop is also documented at the primary level via the CNA education portal image caption (fetched prior session): ‘Palacio Protocolo, August 24 through September 18, 1955’ — that attestation is at
src-cna-education, a Tier-1 source. - A future pass should complete full-text access to extract specific page references, additional quotes, and Sandeen’s argument about USIA selection of Guatemala as a venue.