Before becoming one of the most recognizable symbols of the modern world, the Statue of Liberty was a complex project shaped by the intersection of artistic ambition, engineering and international diplomacy. An exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay revisits the history of this monument through the figure of its creator, the Alsatian sculptor Auguste Bartholdi. The exhibition, titled La Liberté éclairant le monde, offers a reassessment of Bartholdi’s work and of the cultural and political context in which the statue that would eventually dominate the entrance to New York Harbor took shape. Inaugurated in 1886, the monument emerged from the climate of political friendship between France and the United States and belongs to the broader tradition of monumental sculpture that defined the second half of the nineteenth century. The exhibition follows the various stages in the conception of the statue, from the earliest ideas developed in the 1860s to its final realization. Bartholdi had initially imagined a monumental allegorical figure intended for the Suez Canal. Only later did the project evolve into a monument dedicated to Liberty and American independence, conceived as a gift from France to celebrate the centenary of the United States. Alongside its symbolic dimension, the exhibition also reconstructs the technical complexity of the undertaking. At 46 meters high without its pedestal, the statue represented an unprecedented engineering challenge at the time. After the death of the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the structural design was entrusted to Gustave Eiffel, who devised the internal metal framework that would support the outer skin of hammered copper panels produced in Parisian workshops. The exhibition also examines the circulation of the statue’s image even before its inauguration. Parts of the monument were displayed in Europe and the United States to support fundraising campaigns, while illustrated newspapers contributed to turning the figure of Liberty into an international icon well before the statue was completed. The narrative concludes with the transport of the statue to New York and its official inauguration on 28 October 1886, when La Liberté éclairant le monde finally emerged as a political and cultural symbol capable of transcending the historical circumstances in which it had been conceived.
