Building a programme
Beyond premises and provisioning, the archives preserve early evidence of the intellectual ambitions that would define UNESCO’s first decades. A proposal for an International Institute of Pedagogical and Educational Cinematography, submitted in both English and French in late 1945, anticipates debates about educational media that remain live today.
The Mois de l’UNESCO, a month-long programme of events organised around the First General Conference in November 1946, is documented in rich detail: six thematic annexes covering the Exposition Internationale d’Art Moderne, scientific and educational film screenings, an exhibition on education and architecture, and a programme of artistic events with the French Government.
Forty countries had been invited to contribute to the art exhibition; nearly all Member States had promised their participation. Among 650 works assembled at the Musée d’Art Moderne, half the entrance proceeds were earmarked for relief to war-devastated countries. An unsigned pencil sketch preserved in the archives offers a glimpse of the visual imagination behind the project: a globe wrapped in ribbons bearing the words “Exposition Internationale d’Art Moderne – UNESCO – Paris,” with schematic canvases covering its surface, and at the foot, in mirror writing, the address of the venue: Musée d’Art Moderne, Quai de New York.
An Unfinished Question: Copyright
The copyright question, which Julian Huxley had flagged in his BBC broadcast as “of great importance” and urgently in need of international convention, surfaces in a document from the 5th Session of the Preparatory Commission (July 1946): an extract titled simply “Copyright,” mapping the fractured international landscape – the United States and the USSR had not adhered to the Berne Convention; the whole position of copyright in radio, film, and works of art was described as “in a chaotic state.” The document is a reminder of how many of UNESCO’s present-day preoccupations were already legible at the founding moment.
