The Family of Man at UNESCO Hall, Beirut, 1958

An Arabic-English poster for The Family of Man photography exhibition at UNESCO Hall, Beirut, 23 November to 15 December 1958, admission free. It names the American Embassy as presenter and Edward Steichen and the Museum of Modern Art as creators. Filed with U.S. Information Agency posters, catalog date 17 November 1958 (NAID 6948734).

An embassy signs its poster

This poster names its sender in capitals under the title: "PRESENTED BY THE AMERICAN EMBASSY, BEIRUT." The archive describes a dark sheet in green type with a photograph of a smiling person in a brimmed hat playing a flute. The English and Arabic texts run in parallel.

The Family of Man

PRESENTED BY THE AMERICAN EMBASSY, BEIRUT

World's

Greatest Exhibition

of Creative Photography

500 Photographs

from 68 Countries

Created by Edward Steichen

For the

Museum of Modern Art,

New York City

ADMISSION FREE

UNESCO HALL, BEIRUT.

Daily, from 10 A.M. to 8 P.M. November 23 to December 15

The Arabic lines say the same things with small differences. In the archive's machine translation, which it labels unverified, the Arabic credit reads "The exhibition is held under the supervision of the American Embassy in Beirut," and the photographs were "selected by Edward Steichen." The Arabic also prints the year, 1958, which the English date line leaves out.

In the catalog

The National Archives files the poster in Record Group 306, in the series Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, with the U.S. Information Agency and its State Department predecessor as maker. The catalog date is 17 November 1958, six days before the opening date printed on the sheet. FRAME classes the source as identified and records the purpose as "Persuade or win support."

One superlative, and the rest is logistics

FRAME's tag is glittering generalities, and its note points to a single phrase: "World's Greatest Exhibition" is a superlative the sheet does not support. Everything else on the poster is checkable: a hall, a run of dates, opening hours, a count of photographs and countries, a photographer's name and a museum.

As government promotion goes, this is the open kind. The embassy signs the poster, the exhibition credits an American museum, and entry costs nothing. A Beirut visitor could walk in, look at 500 photographs, and make up his own mind about what they said.

A 1959 bill in these files advertises Louis Armstrong and his All Stars at the UNESCO Theater in Beirut. A 1957 Taipei poster for a Marian Anderson recital also names its American sponsors. The program is on the USIA posters abroad hub.