Luckily, I was saved once again by the brilliant Helen Langa and her class on Modern Art in the U.S.: 1935-1970. Dr. Langa’s lecture focused on photography (“I guess every girl goes through a photography phase. You know, horses…” Lost in Translation) and all of a sudden, in between Robert Frank (you are sublime) and Diane Arbus (Nicole Kidman did not do you justice) my professor used the words “cultural diplomacy.” Yes, it seems as if cultural diplomacy is now tiptoeing into my non-IR world and disguising itself not with a moustache and bowler hat, but with art exhibits and my very personable art professor. Dr. Langa was speaking of the exhibit, The Family of Man, which was held at the MoMa in 1955. Edward Steichen, Directory of Photography at the MoMa, narrowed down 2 million photographs from around the world to 503 photographs to be presented in the museum. The photographs were displayed using advertising and publicity techniques and interspersed with the photographs were small texts and poetry. After its stay in the MoMa, the exhibition then toured 37 different countries for eight years. The concept of the exhibition was to show the commonalities of all people from around the globe. Steichen wanted to show the universality of the human experience: life, death, love, war, pain, etc. The last photograph in the exhibition before the exit was a picture of a huge mushroom cloud after the explosion of an atomic bomb. Thus, the viewer was reminded of the fragility of life and the imminent and terrible danger of nuclear weapons. The exhibition was parlayed into a book with an introduction by the poet Carl Sandburg (coincidentally, Steichen’s brother-in-law). The book, which is still in print (and available on Amazon for $19.55, according to Dr. Langa), holds the Sandburg poem, Names, which includes these lines:
“There is only one man in the world and his name is All Men/There is only one woman in the world and her name is All Women/There is only one child in the world and the child’s name is All Children.”
So as Professor Langa talks about how this amazed her ten-year old self and I think how this book amazes my twenty-one-year old self, Langa continues that while Steichen did curate the exhibition, there was a large interplay between the MoMa, in particular, Steichen, the State Department and USIA (the United States Information Agency). The exhibition while depicting the universal traits of man, was also an incredible achievement for U.S. cultural diplomacy. The exhibition was part of “winning the hearts and minds” of people around the globe and instilling American, democratic values during the Cold War. As the exhibit traveled across the world, at its various installations the museums/galleries would emphasize its ties to the locale, thereby showing the similarity of American values to the values of the specific area (Kennedy). The Family of Man was not the first or last exhibition of photography used to showcase U.S. cultural diplomacy. In fact, an exhibition of photography from Ground Zero named, After September 11 also toured the world from 2002 to 2004 and visited nearly 60 countries. (Kennedy)
On a side note, as Dr. Langa rightfully pointed out, though the exhibition displayed a wide range of human emotions and experiences, there was no representation of injustices occurring around the world. Especially during the time of segregation, the start of the second wave of the feminist movement and that is the U.S. alone, not to mention the troubles and human injustices in other countries, it is telling that photographs of these moments were never shown.
Alas, I digress and there is only so much time you can spend procrastinating on blog posts instead of doing homework and applying for jobs (and by that I mean, scouring for jobs and realizing that you should have just applied to grad school right away and that no, it is not realistic that the Travel Channel will call you and decide that you are the perfect new host for a show about eating and traveling abroad on a student budget). Though, perhaps the State Department is looking for a normally quite chic, right now quite disheveled recent graduate who would like to assist in the exhibition of The Family of Man 2.0??? One can hope!
Liam Kennedy
International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-)Vol. 79, No. 2 (Mar., 2003), pp. 315-326
http://www.moma.org/learn/resources/archives/archives_highlights_06_1955
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