Just a few hours outside of Paris (thanks to the speedy TGV), I found myself with two days in Luxembourg. As my hotel was decidedly not befitting my duchess status, I decided to spend as little time in it as possible, and I took a day trip to the tiny town of Clervaux. I would not have believed that such a small place could house a world-class photography exhibit (in a castle, no less!). It was well worth the trip (and two sleepless nights in my stinky Luxembourg hotel).
It was a bit of a hike from the Clervaux train station to the main part of town, but the duct tape was holding my Skechers together, and one is always energetic at the beginning of an adventure. With a daycare covered in painted Winnie the Pooh characters and lots of quaint little houses brimming with windowsill flowerpots, Clervaux could have been anywhere in America, which was actually refreshing after a week in Paris. It seemed the perfect countryside escape for the duchess in disguise.
However, upon winding my way up the hill, I finally reached the stark white Clervaux Castle, and the massive World War II-era tanks situated outside the castle wall quickly reminded me that this was not Kentucky. The castle was built in the 12th century but destroyed in the Battle of the Bulge in WWII and rebuilt afterwards. It is now home to a museum containing an impressive collection of WWII artifacts and propaganda materials as well as the famous photography exhibit, The Family of Man.
The exhibition was curated by American Edward Steichen and first displayed at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1955, but as Steichen was born in Luxembourg, the exhibit is permanently housed in Clervaux. I was lucky enough to visit just before the exhibit closed for a period of renovation, but it will open again in 2013. Before settling in Luxembourg, the exhibit traveled to 38 countries and was viewed by 9 million people, and in 2003 it was added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World register of historical treasures.
Steichen sifted through 2 million submissions to create the exhibition, which follows the cycle of human life from birth to death, conveying the universality of our common experiences through images of a myriad of different cultures. The museum provides a headset to talk you through the journey, but the photographs (as they should) speak for themselves.
I’m tall and of lighter hair and complexion, so pretty much everywhere I go in Europe, especially if I’m alone, people naturally assume I am German. It happens consistently enough that, if I’m ever kidnapped and held hostage, I’m pretty sure they’ll ransom Munich before Manhattan. Standing in the middle of the Family of Man exhibit in Clervaux, Luxembourg, an American in German appearance, in the middle of my own questions about where my future was headed, I suddenly felt centered and calm. I don’t know if that’s what Steichen was getting at, fifty years earlier and oceans away, but I think maybe I caught a part of the intent.
I also popped in to the cave-like Battle of the Bulge museum, although there’s only so much time I can spend under ground with military memorabilia, even with a giant “Thank you, American liberators!” banner to greet me. And as I had lunch in the town’s main square, a toddler running from her brother splatted on the cobblestones and erupted into giant tears until her father cooed and carried her to the car, one last universality of the Family of Man.