I have a “Family Of Man” catalogue that I got from a rummage sale. This was an exhibition at MOMA in the 50s. And the idea of it was sort of, hey, let’s not all nuke each other…They would take photographs from great photographers of people from all over the world and show how alike we are, and then we wouldn’t want to nuke each other anymore. So it starts out with people fall in love, then they get married, then they have babies…It’s very hetero normative, like half the pictures of women are women with babies, or they’re nuns. No one in here…is obviously gay, because I guess they thought if they included that people would be like “Fuck it –let’s nuke ‘em.”…At the beginning there are autographs, indicating this was given as a gift….The inscriptions are all in Portuguese… there are no pictures of Portuguese people in this…Somehow they omitted the nation from which the person to whom this was given was from. Most of the inscriptions are from men…One is signed Friends Forever, Love ___…This one is a really long personal note from a guy, so I’m guessing whoever originally received this in 1974 may have also been gay…It was his graduation.

This belongs in the Museum of Sad Graduation Gifts

Exhibited by Beth

Transcript edited by Eric Bartholomew