Paris exhibition toasts Lady Liberty

IT arrived from France in more than 200 crates in 1885, and it’s been an enduring symbol of Franco-American friendship ever since.

A photo exhibition that chronicles the construction of the Statue of Liberty opens today in Paris, even as relations with Washington remain cool over the war in Iraq and other foreign policy squabbles.

'Bartholdi, the Builders of Liberty', at the Musee des Arts et Metiers honours Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, the monument's designer, on the centenary of his death in 1904. It retraces the iconic statue's construction in Paris, its trans-Atlantic voyage and its assembly and inauguration in New York.