Musée d'Orsay to Show Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty Genesis

This autumn, Paris will mark America's 250th anniversary with an exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay dedicated to Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty. Titled "Auguste Bartholdi Liberty Enlightening the World," the show opens on September 15 and runs until January 31, 2027. Organized in collaboration with the Musée Bartholdi in Colmar, the exhibition aims to highlight Bartholdi's artistic, political, financial, and engineering decisions that led to the creation of what was then the largest statue ever built. The statue, originally intended for the American centennial in 1876, was finally inaugurated in New York Harbor in 1886. The exhibition features a nine-and-a-half-foot bronze model from 1889 based on Bartholdi's 1876 scale version, along with models, studies, and documentation of the statue's dismantling, voyage, and reassembly. It also includes photographs and artworks depicting the statue's construction and evolution, such as Victor Dargaud's painting of the statue in the foundry and Albert Fernique's photographs of the assembly. The show underscores the improbable nature of the project, which involved creating a 151-foot-tall copper woman far from its final site, requiring near-industrial production methods.