Statue of Liberty Congress officially renamed Bedloe's Island as Liberty Island, a change advocated by Bartholdi generations earlier. The act also mentioned the efforts to found an American Museum of Immigration on the island, which backers took as federal approval of the project, though the government was slow to grant funds for it. Nearby Ellis Island was made part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument by proclamation of President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. In 1972, the immigration museum, in the statue's base, was finally opened in a ceremony led by President Richard Nixon. The museum's backers never provided it with an endowment
Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia, also known as Progress Carrying the Light to Asia or pedestal committee; was a plan for a colossal neoclassical sculpture. Designed in the late 1860s by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, a French sculptor, the project was to be a statue of a robed female figure bearing a torch at the entryway of the Suez Canal in Port Said, Egypt. Both the khedive and Lessups declined the proposed statue from Bartholdi, citing the expensive cost. The Port Said Lighthouse was built instead, by François Coignet in 1869. In the 1880s