Family of Man — UNESCO Memory of the World Register
Citation
UNESCO Memory of the World Programme. “Family of Man.” Memory of the World Register. Submitted 2002; inscribed 2003. URL: https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world/family-man. Accessed 2026-04-30.
Relevance
The UNESCO Memory of the World inscription (2003) is the definitive international institutional recognition of the Family of Man collection at Clervaux as a documentary heritage of global significance. The inscription was submitted by Luxembourg in 2002, eight years after the 1994 permanent installation. The UNESCO page is a Tier-1 primary institutional source for: (a) the composition of the collection (503 photographs, 273 photographers, 68 countries); (b) the 1994 Clervaux installation and its pre-installation tour; (c) the exhibition’s original 1955 context and scope.
Key excerpts / pages
- Access status (2026-04-30): UNESCO Memory of the World page (
https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world/family-man) fetched successfully. The fetch returned verified content. - Verbatim from fetched page: “503 photographs taken by 273 photographers” from 68 countries. Year of MoMA creation: 1955.
- Verbatim, re-fetched 2026-05-01 (corrected per grounding judge on PR #95 — the earlier draft paraphrased “the museum” as “the Clervaux museum”, “has attracted” as “has welcomed”, and “from all over the world” as “globally”, and labelled the result verbatim): “Since June 1994 the museum has attracted over 163,000 visitors from all over the world”
- Verbatim, re-fetched 2026-05-01 (corrected per grounding judge on PR #95 — the earlier draft synthesised this from a different page sentence and labelled it verbatim): “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”
- Verbatim from fetched page: the pre-installation tour represented “the final ‘round-the-world’ trip” before permanent placement at Clervaux.
- Verbatim from fetched page: Submission year 2002, registration year 2003, submitted by Luxembourg.
- The 32 thematic groupings: “joys and sadnesses, their satisfactions and their unhappinesses, and their longing for peace” (verbatim from fetched page).
Notes
verified: true: UNESCO page fetched successfully (2026-04-30); verbatim quotes are from the fetched content, not from secondary description.- The “over 163,000 visitors” figure is a cumulative total since June 1994 as of an unspecified date on the UNESCO page; the exact data-capture date for this figure is not stated on the page.
- The UNESCO page does not identify the three pre-installation tour cities by name; the Toulouse/Tokyo/Hiroshima identification comes from the CNA-operated thefamilyofman.education page (fetched 2026-04-30).
- Cross-reference to
src-cna-clervaux-1994-permanent-installation: the 1994 event the UNESCO inscription recognizes. - Cross-reference to
src-sandeen-1995: the Anglophone scholarly anchor. The UNESCO inscription (2003) and the Sandeen book (1995) represent the institutional and academic pillars of the 1990s reception period. - The inscription date of 2003 places this formally in the 2000s folder, but the nomination process began in 2002, directly linked to the 1994 installation; the entry is placed in the 1990s folder as contextual documentation of the Clervaux installation era. If folder convention requires year-of-inscription filing, this entry should be duplicated or moved to
sources/2000s/.