OK. Let’s talk about America’s Number One “This is my Country” piece of public art. Let’s talk about the Statue of Liberty.
The first time I saw her, I wasn’t expecting to. I was on my way from Manhattan to Staten Island to visit a friend. I had only been in NYC a few times, so didn’t really pay attention to the route the ferry took. I settled down to read a bit, and shortly after leaving the dock looked up to see Lady Liberty standing in the rain. It wrenched a cry straight from my gut and the tears streamed down my face. And this was from a political cynic. (Photo from the semaphoreinc.com website)
I like the idea that her face was the sculptor’s mother’s, though it made me wonder how it must feel to arrive by boat from Europe to see a 150 foot version of your mother raising her arm at you. She has incredibly strong features. I can’t imagine what homelife must have been for them. And the fact that he blended mom’s face with his wife’s body is a bit too Freudian for words.
But what most interests me now are the rumors about her whispered in back rooms and trumpeted on the web.
I was researching art in Boston when I heard the rumor that originally Liberty Gal was up for grabs. She wasn’t “site specific” or just made for New York Harbor. As a matter of fact, Bartholdi first offered her to Boston, but the city dithered so long that when he finally had a taker in New York, she was sent there for life.
There’s another rumor, too, set out in 2000, that the piece was originally made to celebrate the emancipation of the slaves and that the original model was a black woman. In the terra cotta model of the piece, the figure has a broken shackle on her wrist. In the harbor version, she has broken chains at her feet.
And from the hope-of-israel website comes the assertion that the statue is actually a pagan goddess, created by a Mason with arcane intent. Supposedly, Bartholdi (a Frenchman, for Pete’s sake) was working on a statue of Isis for the Suez Canal when he got the opportunity to use the design to plant in New York. It was the chance of his lifetime to establish the cult of the goddess on Christian shores.
10:28:44 AM 
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