On September 15, 2026, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris opens an exhibition about the man behind the world’s most reproduced sculpture - and almost no one knows his name. Auguste Bartholdi created the Statue of Liberty, but the monument has so completely eclipsed its creator that he has effectively vanished from the story. The exhibition “La Liberté éclairant le monde” runs until January 31, 2027, and is as much about how an image becomes an icon as it is about the statue itself. It’s a question that matters to anyone choosing a poster for the wall: why do some images stick in the collective memory while others, technically every bit as skillful, pass by unnoticed?
Quick facts: The exhibition is on view in Gallery 69 on Level 2 at the Musée d'Orsay, September 15, 2026, to January 31, 2027, curated by François Blanchetière (Orsay) and Juliette Chevée (Musée Bartholdi in Colmar). Regular admission is 16 euros. In parallel, the museum is presenting a virtual experience covering nearly 700 square meters in Galerie Amont. The statue is 46 meters tall and 93 meters including its pedestal, and was inaugurated in New York Harbor on October 28, 1886.
Why a small Alsatian town is co-organizing the exhibition
The exhibition is being organized in collaboration with the Musée Bartholdi in Colmar, and this is no mere courtesy. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was born in Colmar in 1834, and when Alsace was annexed by Germany after the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, his home region suddenly became foreign territory. That experience - of losing a place to a foreign power - lies at the heart of the entire project to create a gigantic allegory of liberty.
The Colmar museum is housed in the artist’s childhood home and owns plaster models, sketches, and correspondence showing how the idea took shape. The fact that the two institutions are presenting this together means Paris audiences will get to see material that normally never leaves Alsace, alongside Orsay’s own bronze version of “Liberté” from 1889.
For a Swedish visitor, this is useful to know for practical reasons. Colmar is just over an hour from Strasbourg and can easily be combined with a trip to Paris in the fall, and the museum in Colmar continues its regular operations during the exhibition.
From the Suez Canal to New York Harbor - the idea that crossed continents
The most surprising thing in the story is that the Statue of Liberty originally had nothing to do with America. In the 1860s, Bartholdi had worked on a proposal for a colossal lighthouse at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal: a draped female figure holding a torch above her head, intended to be called something like “Egypt Bringing Light to Asia.” The Egyptian khedive turned it down.
The idea survived rejection. When the French republican circle around lawyer Édouard de Laboulaye wanted to honor the centennial of the American Declaration of Independence in 1876, Bartholdi already had a finished figure in his portfolio. She changed continents, changed meaning, and became a French gift to the United States.
"The motif was complete before the meaning existed. That’s the order that makes an image an icon - form first, meaning afterward."
The centennial year of 1876 came and went without a celebration. Fundraising was slow on both sides of the Atlantic, and the inauguration was postponed until October 28, 1886 - ten years late. In the meantime, parts of the statue were exhibited at full scale: the torch and hand were shown at the 1876 World’s Fair in Philadelphia, and the head at the 1878 World’s Fair in Paris. The public could thus climb inside a monument that didn’t yet exist.
Viollet-le-Duc, Eiffel, and the copper hammered in Paris
The exhibition devotes considerable space to the engineering, and rightly so. The sculpture is a thin copper shell - only a couple of millimeters thick - shaped by hand over wooden molds using a technique called repoussé, in the workshops of Gaget, Gauthier & Cie in Paris. A copper skin on that scale doesn’t stand up on its own.
Architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, best known for his restorations of French cathedrals, first proposed a solid sand structure. He died in 1879 before the design was finished, and the assignment went to Gustave Eiffel - ten years before the tower that bears his name was completed. Eiffel designed an inner iron skeleton with a spring-mounted suspension that lets the copper shell move with temperature changes and wind loads without cracking.
That’s why the Statue of Liberty is fundamentally the same idea as the Eiffel Tower: a skeleton that supports, a surface that can be seen. Those fascinated by this kind of construction will find related motifs among our graphic posters, where architectural lines and technical drawings are a recurring theme.
Why this particular motif became the most copied in the world
The statue was the largest in the world when it was built. But size doesn’t explain why it became a universal symbol - plenty of large monuments are forgotten. Three other things did the trick.
First, the image circulated before the object existed. The illustrated press published engravings of the project throughout the 1870s, and the fundraising campaign sold miniatures and lithographs to finance the construction. The image had therefore become familiar in millions of homes before anyone had seen the original.
Second, the silhouette is easy to reduce. Strip away everything but the outline – the drapery, the raised arm, the crown of rays – and it is still instantly recognizable. It’s the same quality that makes the Eiffel Tower and Hokusai’s Great Wave enduring subjects for graphic art.
Third, she stands in a harbor. The image served a purpose in people’s real lives: it was the first and last image of a continent for the millions who arrived by sea. An image connected to a personal experience will always outlast one that is simply beautiful.
Tip: Test how well a city poster holds up when simplified before you buy it. Squint at the image on your screen until the details disappear. If you can still tell which city it is, the design has a strong silhouette and will stand the test of time on your wall. If it just turns into a blur, it depends on details you’ll stop noticing after a month.
What you’ll actually see in Gallery 69 – and the virtual tour in Galerie Amont
The exhibition is located in Gallery 69 on the museum’s second floor, which is Orsay’s format for focused thematic exhibitions rather than major retrospectives. Curators François Blanchetière and Juliette Chevée have built the story chronologically around four stages: Bartholdi’s early monumental ambitions, the project’s conception and transformation, its technical production, and finally the circulation of its image.
What sets this exhibition apart from a regular sculpture exhibition is the type of material on display. It features not only finished works but also working materials: plaster models in various scales, drawings, fundraising posters, engravings from the illustrated press, and photographs of the workshops in Paris where the copper skin was hammered into shape. For anyone interested in how a work of art actually comes into being, this kind of material is often more rewarding than the originals.
At the same time, the museum is presenting a virtual experience in Galerie Amont, “A Statue for Liberty – Bartholdi’s Dream, from Paris to New York,” covering almost 700 square meters. It takes visitors from the workshop in Paris to the harbor in New York, following exactly the route the statue traveled in 214 packing crates aboard the frigate Isère in the summer of 1885. An introductory lecture about the exhibition will be held on November 6, 2026.
The fact that the museum devotes so much space to a digital reconstruction says something about the problem itself: the original cannot be loaned. An exhibition about the world’s most famous sculpture inevitably has to be about everything except the sculpture itself - models, measurements, reproductions, and images of images. The same is true of wall art at home, where the reproduction is always what you actually live with. We’ve written about what research says about this difference in our article on the authenticity effect and the art on your wall.
New York and Paris on a Swedish wall - size, color, and placement
City-themed art is one of the most popular categories in Swedish homes, and the two cities connected by the exhibition are also the two bestsellers. But they behave differently on the wall.
New York-themed art is naturally vertical. Skyscrapers, harbor skylines, and a statue with a raised arm all emphasize height, making them ideal for narrow spaces: between two doors, in a cramped hallway, or above a dresser. The 50 × 70 centimeter portrait format is the most common choice for the home, and the artwork looks good with a black or dark frame that enhances the contrast.
Paris-themed art is more varied and works better in landscape formats - rooftops, bridges, and boulevards are horizontal. A wide cityscape measuring 70 × 100 centimeters above a sofa or dining table works beautifully. Our entire selection of posters of famous places is organized by destination, and the French capital has its own section in our Parisian Collection.
If you want to avoid city scenes feeling like tourist souvenirs, there’s a simple trick: choose grayscale. The eye reads black-and-white cityscapes as architecture rather than travel photos, and they work with any color scheme in your room. We’ve gathered them under black-and-white posters, and anyone who prefers documentary images to illustrations will find what they’re looking for in our photographic art section. We’ve also written a more detailed guide to posters of famous places that explains how to create a travel-inspired wall without making it look like a noticeboard.
Frequently asked questions about Bartholdi and the Statue of Liberty
The autumn exhibition is fundamentally a story about how a form outlives its purpose. Bartholdi designed a lighthouse, was turned down, and ended up creating the most reproduced sculpture in human history. If you want to build a wall of images that lasts just as long, start with our collection of posters of famous places, and for more on how the poster became an art form, we recommend our article on the history of the poster, from the Belle Époque to your wall. All practical information about the exhibition is available from the Musée d'Orsay, and anyone who wants to learn more about the artist’s background can find more at the Musée Bartholdi in Colmar.