Liberty enlightening the world

From September 15, 2026, to January 31, 2027, the Musée d’Orsay is dedicating an exhibition and an immersive virtual reality experience to Auguste Bartholdi, a leading figure in 19th-century French sculpture and creator of iconic works, as well as to his masterpiece, Liberty enlightening the world. Planned 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. Between times, Bartholdi and his supporters had to show proof of imagination, audaciousness and tenacity in order to design, promote and create what was then the largest statue in the world (46 meters high, 93 meters with its pedestal). Organized in partnership with the Bartholdi Museum in the city of Colmar,the exhibition looks back on Auguste Bartholdi’s career, an Alsatian sculptor with a visionary temperament whose monumental ambition asserted itself in his earliest projects and was further nurtured by the political upheavals of his day. It explores the birth of the Statue of Liberty, the result of a project originally conceived for the Suez Canal and then turned into an allegorical figure celebrating American independence. The idea, promoted by the Franco-American Union, came to fruition following Bartholdi’s visits to the United States and the remarkable efforts made to raise the necessary funding. Images of the statue were widely disseminated even before its completion, thanks to numerous articles published in the illustrated press and presentation of full-scale components during the 1876 and 1878 World’s Fairs. The stages of its construction are perfect illustrations of the union of art and engineering, from the technical choices envisioned by Viollet-le-Duc and materialized by Gustave Eiffel to the hammering of the copper in Parisian workshops and complete assembly of the statue. The journey concluded with its transport to New York, completion of the pedestal and the inauguration on October 28, 1886, which immediately established Liberty enlightening the world as a major universal symbol. Emblematic of the ideas of its era, the Statue of Liberty testifies to an unwavering faith in progress, human and technical alike, and in the universal values that art can give intelligible form to. The exhibition aims to help visitors understand the artistic, ideological, economic and technological choices that enabled successful completion of this out-of-the-ordinary project.