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.

About 50 photographs donated by Bartholdi's widow in 1907, as well as two models of the Gaget and Gauthier workshop where Lady Liberty was built, are the centrepieces of the display. "They show with emotion how the union of the artistic and the technical led to the realisation of one of the most famous and most photographed monuments in the world," the organisers said.

A gift to the American people to mark the 100th anniversary of American independence in 1876, the statue initially was intended to symbolise the alliance between the two nations during the American Revolution.

In the nearly 120 years since she first rose up over New York Harbour in 1886, the statue has come to symbolise freedom and democracy to people all over the world particularly to the more than 20 million immigrants who sailed past the statue in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with hopes of starting afresh in America.

At the time, the project a collaboration between the French, who built and assembled the statue, and the Americans, who were responsible for the pedestal was strapped for cash on both sides of the Atlantic.

The pedestal was incomplete when the statue arrived in pieces in New York. Work had slowed due to insufficient funding.

New York publishing magnate Joseph Pulitzer urged Americans to contribute to the construction of the national treasure.

The statue was closed as a security measure following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Its pedestal was reopened to the public earlier this year.