Lady Liberty’s ‘Little Sister’ Arrives In NYC For Family Reunion After 135 Years
Image via Kiev.Victor / Shutterstock.com
The Statue of Liberty’s “little sister,” a smaller replica copy 1/16th of the size of the historic New York landmark, has taken a summer trip from the port of Le Havre to the Port of Newark to be displayed on Ellis Island. It joins the original statue for its 135th-anniversary celebration of crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty, had the original plaster sculpture bequeathed to the Musée des Arts et Métiers by his widow in 1907. Almost a hundred years later in 2005, French art dealer Guillaume Duhamel acquired permission from the museum to create 12 casts (the maximum he was able to, under French law) from the original. He then promised to let the museum keep the first cast, which is the aforementioned piece now standing on Ellis Island.
“The first Lady Liberty was not given by the French government to the American government, but by the French people to the American people,” Pascal Confavreux, the Press Counselor of the Embassy of France, tells Untapped New York. "Her little sister will arrive in the US as the result of a joint effort led by historians, artists, and engineers; civil society, cultural institutions, and companies from both countries.”
If the original Lady Liberty was gifted to symbolize a friendship between the two countries, her little sister arriving on American shores in 2021 remains a sign of the continuity of this friendship, more than a century later. "It's more important than ever to underline how our democracies need to work together, with our common values, including everything which is symbolized by these statues – freedom, but also equal opportunities for all our citizens,” states French Ambassador Philippe Étienne, according to CBS News.
Later, the replica will continue its itinerary to Washington DC, to be displayed outside the French Ambassador’s Residence in time for Bastille Day on July 14.
Image via Kiev.Victor / Shutterstock.com
[via Untapped New York, images via Kiev.Victor / Shutterstock.com]
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