Statue of Liberty and dedicatory tablets on or near the Statue of Liberty. A group of statues stands at the western end of the island, honoring those closely associated with the Statue of Liberty. Two Americans—Pulitzer and Lazarus—and three Frenchmen—Bartholdi, Eiffel, and Laboulaye—are depicted. They are the work of Maryland sculptor Phillip Ratner. In 1984, the Statue of Liberty was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The UNESCO "Statement of Significance" describes the statue as a "masterpiece of the human spirit" that "endures as a highly potent symbol—inspiring contemplation, debate and protest—of ideals such as liberty, peace, human rights, abolition of slavery, democracy
Conservation-restoration of the Statue of Liberty the statue's remarkable structure. The second hypothesis was that the Americans, after having uncrated the different sections of the statue in 1886, incorrectly reassembled the structural framework. The third hypothesis is that the statue’s creator, Bartholdi, was aesthetically dissatisfied when the statue was fully assembled and displayed in Paris on or just prior to July 4, 1884, and that he must have willingly sacrificed the structural integrity for his aesthetic vision. One of the main architects of the restoration project was initially convinced that the second hypothesis was correct, but according to a quoted and published statement, recent research had