Conceived as a gift from France to the United States and initially intended to commemorate the centenary of American independence in 1876, the statue was finally inaugurated ten years later, in 1886. In the meantime, Bartholdi and his supporters had to show imagination, boldness and tenacity to design, promote and build what was then the largest statue in the world (46 m high, 93 m with its pedestal).
Organised in partnership with the Musée Bartholdi in the city of Colmar, the exhibition traces the path of Auguste Bartholdi, an Alsatian sculptor with a visionary temperament, whose monumental ambition asserts itself from his first projects and draws deeply on the political upheavals of his era. It explores the birth of the Statue of Liberty, originally derived from a project for the Suez Canal, then transformed into an allegorical figure celebrating American independence. The idea, carried by the Franco-American Union, takes shape through Bartholdi's travels to the United States and the exceptional mobilisation to raise the necessary funds. The image of the statue spread widely even before its completion, thanks to numerous articles published in the illustrated press and to the presentation of full-scale elements during the 1876 and 1878 World's Fairs.
The stages of construction illustrate the union of art and engineering, from the technical choices imagined by Viollet-le-Duc and then carried out by Gustave Eiffel, to the hammering of copper in the Parisian workshops and the complete assembly of the statue. The journey concludes with transport to New York, the completion of the pedestal and the inauguration on 28 October 1886, which immediately established La Liberté éclairant le monde as a major and universal symbol.
Emblematic of the ideals of its time, the Statue of Liberty bears witness to an unwavering faith in progress, both human and technical, and in universal values to which art can give an intelligible form. The exhibition aims to help visitors understand the artistic, ideological, economic and technological choices that made this extraordinary project possible.
In parallel with the exhibition "Auguste Bartholdi, La Liberté éclairant le monde", the Musée d'Orsay presents the unprecedented virtual reality experience "Une Statue pour la Liberté, le rêve de Bartholdi, de Paris à New York", deployed over nearly 700 m² in the Galerie Amont of the museum.