Musée d’Orsay opens immersive VR journey into the Statue of Liberty’s creation

The Musée d’Orsay in Paris has launched A Statue for Liberty: Bartholdi’s Dream, a virtual reality exhibition running through Jan. 31, 2027 and centered on the making of the Statue of Liberty. The experience uses historical research, reconstructed sets and VR headsets to show how Auguste Bartholdi’s ambitious project moved from idea to monument.

Why it matters: - The Musée d’Orsay is using virtual reality to turn a major historical monument into an immersive, visitor-driven experience. - The exhibition puts the Statue of Liberty’s creation in a Franco-American context and highlights the engineering and artistic hurdles behind the project. - The project shows how museums are using digital tools to expand access to cultural heritage and attract new audiences.

What happened: - The Musée d’Orsay in Paris opened A Statue for Liberty: Bartholdi’s Dream on Sept. 15, 2026. - The exhibition runs through Jan. 31, 2027 in the museum’s Amont Gallery on Level 0. - The experience covers almost 700 square meters. - The project is a coproduction with VIVE Arts and BackLight, with participation from the Musée Bartholdi in Colmar.

The details: - Visitors wear virtual-reality headsets and follow Auguste Bartholdi’s path as the Statue of Liberty takes shape. - The experience is based on extensive historical research. - GEDEON Experiences created an original reconstruction of the Gaget, Gauthier & Cie workshop with partner Aristeas. - The curators worked closely with GEDEON Experiences and BackLight Studio to keep the recreations historically faithful. - The exhibition moves between changing scales, from a sketch on a worktable to the finished monument. - The narrative follows Bartholdi’s inspirations, doubts and setbacks as the project grows. - The story begins in politician Edouard Laboulaye’s drawing room. - The experience also reaches the banks of the Nile, where Bartholdi once imagined a huge lighthouse at the entrance to the Suez Canal. - Visitors pass through the political upheavals that shaped France and the United States in the second half of the 19th century. - The project faces financial problems, fragile early models and doubts about whether the undertaking is possible. - The exhibition includes the 1876 World’s Fair in Philadelphia, where the statue’s torch was revealed to win public support. - The recreated Gaget, Gauthier & Cie workshop appears for the first time in virtual reality. - The workshop is presented as a massive industrial space with nearly 600 workers, craftspeople and journeymen building the copper colossus. - Visitors see scaffolding, giant hand-hammered plates and the technical solutions Gustave Eiffel developed for the monument.

Between the lines: - The exhibition blends entertainment and scholarship, using museum oversight and historical research to reduce the distance between digital storytelling and academic reconstruction. - The emphasis on workshop labor and engineering turns the Statue of Liberty story into more than a symbol reveal; it becomes a story about production, risk and industrial scale. - VIVE Arts positions the project as part of a broader push to use immersive media to preserve and reframe cultural history. More information

What's next: - The exhibition remains open at the Musée d’Orsay until Jan. 31, 2027. - Visitors can continue to experience the VR installation at Level 0 in the Amont Gallery during the run. - VIVE Arts says it has completed more than 75 projects worldwide since 2017, signaling more immersive art and heritage collaborations ahead.