Picturing an Exhibition: The Family of Man and 1950s America

In 1954, Edward Steichen curated the exhibition The Family of Man at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. More people attended this exhibition than any other show of photographs, and the catalogue of the exhibition is still in print. Sandeen explores the worldwide influence of this collection in the first in-depth study of the exhibition. Recently derided as sentimental, the richness and historical complexity of this portrayal of humanity have been overlooked. Sandeen reveals the exhibition's multilayered relationship with the values of postwar America.