34 museomag   01 ‘ 2023 
THE MANY FACES OF A 
“LËTZEBUERGER JONG” 
A DETAILED LOOK AT THE MNHA’S STEICHEN COLLECTION 
The newly published volume Edward Steichen. The Luxembourg Bequest offers a much-needed appraisal of the MNHA’s collection. 
It’s a little known fact that the Luxembourg-born 
photographer Edward Steichen left a collection of 178 
photographs to his home country that is notable both 
for its range and quality. The then National Museum of 
Luxembourg was issued the bequest in 1985 and this 
collection of original prints has received surprisingly 
little scholarly attention since, compared to the public 
recognition garnered by the two exhibitions curated by 
the photographer, namely The Family of Man and The 
Bitter Years. 
The newly published volume Edward Steichen. The 
Luxembourg Bequest offers a much-needed appraisal 
of the MNHA’s collection, a selection of which is on 
permanent display at the museum’s designated 
Steichen cabinet, changed every three months for 
conservation reasons. Featuring full-page illustrations 
of each print in the bequest, including the inscriptions 
on the back, the catalogue is a valuable resource for 
photography experts and enthusiasts. 
The images are ordered thematically rather than 
chronologically, covering Steichen’s early landscapes, 
portraits and nudes, as well as rare colour prints 
and experimental works from the 1920s and 1930s. 
Designed to put the bequest on the scholarly map, 
the publication also includes six essays that shed light 
on different aspects of the collection, offering new 
avenues of investigation and detailed analysis of the 
prints themselves. 
THE STORY BEHIND THE BEQUEST 
In the introduction to the publication, the MNHA’s 
director Michel Polfer tracks the unlikely history of 
the bequest and its reception in Luxembourg, from 
the late 1980s through to today. Indeed, it wasn’t at all 
a given that Luxembourg should receive such a 
generous donation. As Polfer points out, Steichen 
had an ambivalent relationship with his country of birth 
which waxed and waned over the course of his life. 
His 1952 visit to Luxembourg, for instance, was met 
with complete indifference on the part of the local 
© 
éric chenal