France is sending a second Statue of Liberty to be erected on Ellis Island, across the water from the original on Liberty Island.
The 10-foot “little sister,” one-sixteenth the size of the original “New Colossus,” was taken out of France’s Museum of Arts and Crafts in a ceremony on Monday, a day after the 77th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy.
“We want to send a very simple message: Our friendship with the United States is very important, particularly at this moment. We have to conserve and defend our friendship,” said Olivier Faron, the museum’s general administrator.
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Created in 2009, the miniature statue is a replica of the original plaster cast that artist Frederic Auguste Bartholdi used to design the larger statue.
The statue will stand at Ellis Island from July 1 to July 5 for Independence Day celebrations. It will then travel to the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., for Bastille Day on July 14 and remain there for 10 more years.
Bartholdi first sought approval for the original statue from U.S. President Ulysses Grant in 1871. It took four years to make a deal in which France would pay for the sculpture, while the U.S. would buy the pedestal.
When the statue arrived in the U.S. in 1886, President Grover Cleveland dedicated it.
Lady Liberty, holding a torch in her right hand and a tablet inscribed with the date of America’s founding in her left, became a symbol of American folklore.
The Statue of Liberty was the first sight of America for millions of immigrants to the U.S. when they came by boat into New York Harbor. The placement of the statue by Bartholdi was deliberate, as every boat coming into the harbor saw what became Liberty Island.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door,” wrote Emma Lazarus, describing the statue’s symbolism in her 1883 poem, The New Colossus.
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The statue from France joins other replicas of the original Statue of Liberty in cities including Madison, Wisconsin, and Las Vegas, Nevada.
