Who designed the Statue of Liberty’s famous exterior sculpture?

Frédéric Bartholdi designed the Statue of Liberty’s famous exterior sculpture.

Bartholdi was a French sculptor who developed the monument as a gift from the people of France to the United States. The statue was officially titled Liberty Enlightening the World and represented Libertas, the Roman goddess of liberty. Its colossal figure holds a torch in the raised right hand and a tablet inscribed with July 4, 1776, in the left.

Gustave Eiffel and his engineering team designed the statue’s internal iron framework, allowing the copper skin to move slightly in wind and temperature changes. This is why Eiffel is often mistakenly named as the statue’s sculptor. The copper sheets were formed using repoussé techniques and assembled over the framework.

The statue was dedicated in New York Harbor on October 28, 1886. Emma Lazarus’s sonnet “The New Colossus,” written in 1883, was placed on a plaque inside the pedestal in 1903 and later became closely associated with the monument.