Musée d'Orsay hosts exhibition on Auguste Bartholdi and the funding of the Statue of Liberty

Behind the creation of the Statue of Liberty lies a grand financial epic. The monument's makers resorted to crowdfunding long before the term existed, although in those years many monuments were built by subscription, and anyone who wished could contribute his mite. So it was in this case: without the active participation of ordinary citizens of France and America, the Statue of Liberty would never have been built. But besides the ordinary collection of money, posters, photographs and the most unusual souvenir products were pressed into service.

To mark the 140th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty and the 250th anniversary of the independence of the United States, the Musée d'Orsay is holding an exhibition devoted to Auguste Bartholdi and his masterpiece, "Liberty Enlightening the World".

In essence, the museum invites visitors to rediscover the French sculptor, whose name has been unjustly overshadowed by his own monumental creation, the Statue of Liberty. Part of the exhibition, moreover, takes the form of a VR display with an immersive 35-minute session, during which visitors meet eminent figures from Édouard de Laboulaye and Gustave Eiffel to Joseph Pulitzer.

The first part of the exhibition is a traditional display in two small rooms, where casts, paintings and engravings tell the story of the monument's construction. It shows, step by step and through the eyes of the Parisians and New Yorkers of the day, how the 46-metre structure, known as "the eighth wonder of the world", was brought into being.