Stephen Bayley

An ambivalent icon

Far from protecting the huddled masses, Liberty was designed to dominate New York Bay in an anti-British show of French colonial ambition

issue 10 November 2018

Immigrants to the United States in the late 19th century discovered in Upper New York Bay, after a long, uncomfortable trans-Atlantic journey, a real portal and a symbolic one. There was Ellis Island: designer, William A. Boring. Then there was the Statue of Liberty on neighbouring Bedloe’s Island: designer, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi. The first was a practical introduction to America, where you got processed; the second a more mystical one, where you got inspired.

It’s a good moment to publish an account of the Statue of Liberty, perhaps the world’s most famous sculpture. One reason: in London there’s an evolving debate about what a monument should be, stimulated by the clumsy Holocaust Memorial proposed near Parliament. The other reason: never have American principles of liberty been under more intense international scrutiny. Dave Eggers caught this mood last year in Her Right Foot, where he found Liberty’s pedal extremity, striding forth, to be a ‘powerful message of acceptance’.

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