Replicas of the Statue of Liberty Replicas of the Statue of Liberty Hundreds of replicas of the Statue of Liberty ("Liberty Enlightening the World") have been created worldwide. On the occasion of the Exposition Universelle of 1900, Frédéric Bartholdi crafted a smaller version of "Liberty Enlightening the World", which he subsequently gave to the Musée du Luxembourg. In 1905, the statue was placed outside the museum in the Jardin du Luxembourg, where it stood for over a century, until 2014. It currently stands within the entrance hall to the Musée d'Orsay, and a newly constructed bronze replica stands in its place in the Jardin du Luxembourg.
Statue of Liberty past it. He was delighted to learn that the island was owned by the United States government—it had been ceded by the New York State Legislature in 1800 for harbor defense. It was thus, as he put it in a letter to Laboulaye: "land common to all the states." As well as meeting many influential New Yorkers, Bartholdi visited President Ulysses S. Grant, who assured him that it would not be difficult to obtain the site for the statue. Bartholdi crossed the United States twice by rail, and met many Americans who he thought would be sympathetic to the project.