15 September 2026 — 31 January 2027

Auguste Bartholdi: Liberty Enlightening the World

From 15 September 2026 to 31 January 2027, the Musée d’Orsay devotes an exhibition – together with an immersive virtual reality experience – to Auguste Bartholdi, a leading figure of 19th-century French sculpture and the author of iconic works, and to his masterpiece, Liberty Enlightening the World. Conceived as a gift from France to the United States and originally meant to celebrate the centenary of American independence in 1876, the statue was finally inaugurated ten years later, in 1886. In the meantime Bartholdi and his supporters needed imagination, daring and perseverance to design, promote and build what was then the largest statue in the world – 46 metres high, 93 metres including its pedestal. Organised in partnership with the Musée Bartholdi in Colmar, the exhibition retraces the career of the Alsatian sculptor, a visionary whose taste for the monumental emerged in his earliest projects and was fuelled by the political upheavals of his time. It follows the genesis of the Statue of Liberty, born of a project first imagined for the Suez Canal and then reworked as an allegory celebrating American independence. Championed by the Franco-American Union, the idea took shape after Bartholdi’s journeys to the United States and an extraordinary fundraising effort. Images of the statue circulated widely before it was even finished, through countless articles in the illustrated press and the display of full-size sections at the World’s Fairs of 1876 and 1878. Each stage of its construction illustrates the union of art and engineering – from the technical solutions devised by Viollet-le-Duc and carried out by Gustave Eiffel, to the hammering of the copper sheets in Parisian workshops and the complete assembly of the figure. The story ends with its shipment to New York, the completion of the pedestal and the inauguration on 28 October 1886, which immediately made Liberty Enlightening the World a universal symbol. Emblematic of the ideas of its age, the statue embodies an unshakeable faith in progress, both human and technical, and in universal values to which art can give visible form. The exhibition helps visitors understand the artistic, ideological, economic and technological choices that made this extraordinary undertaking possible. The visit can be extended with the immersive virtual reality experience “A Statue for Liberty: Bartholdi’s Dream, from Paris to New York”. Curated by François Blanchetière, Chief Curator of Sculpture and Architecture, Musée d’Orsay, and Juliette Chevée, Director and Curator, Musée Bartholdi, Colmar.

Musée d'Orsay