Think of America, and what do you get? Red, white, and blue? Hot dogs and hamburgers? The Bill of Rights? Top of mind in American iconography, the Statue of Liberty may be among the most recognizable figures. But has it always had the same meaning? Generation after generation, the monument has served as an emblem of freedom, immigration, and, of course, national aspiration. On the other hand, she’s been used in advertising, political messaging, protest, and artistic critique. Opening Aug. 15 at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, The Statue of Liberty from Bartholdi to Warhol follows that evolution across 150 years. Nearly 100 artworks and objects by more than 70 artists consider how the statue’s image has been constructed, circulated, and repeatedly reinterpreted from the 1870s through the present. All to answer the question: What does America think of Lady Liberty?
Co-organized by the Carter and the Denver Art Museum, the exhibition arrives in Fort Worth during the 250th anniversary year of the nation’s founding. It includes work by Pacita Abad, Benny Andrews, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Colescott, Roy Lichtenstein, Norman Rockwell, Nari Ward, Andy Warhol, and others.
“This monumental exhibition tells the story of how our nation has interpreted the Statue of Liberty not only as a national icon, but also as a reflection of American values, creativity, and identity throughout our collective history,” said Scott Wilcox, interim director of the Carter.
At the center of the exhibition stands Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s Liberty Enlightening the World (Statue of Liberty). The sculpture was acquired by the Carter in 2024 and is one of only five domestic-scale reductions made during his lifetime. Now visitors can encounter the monument not only on their level, but also as a sculptural object rather than just a national monument.
The exhibition unfolds in four sections, beginning with the statue’s development during the politically unsettled decades between the Civil War and World War I. “Creating a Monument” examines the visual traditions that preceded Bartholdi’s figure and the Franco-American ideals of liberty and freedom that informed its design. The section includes early studies, watercolors, photographs of the monument’s construction, and images of Bartholdi that trace its development from an ambitious proposal into a feat of art and engineering. Edward Moran’s 1886 painting Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World (The Unveiling of the Statue of Liberty)appears alongside the Carter’s bronze cast, placing the monument within the sensation surrounding its public debut.
Period newspapers and advertisements appear throughout the exhibition and reveal how quickly Lady Liberty entered popular consciousness. Almost immediately, the statue became both a subject of national debate (not everyone was a fan) and a commercially useful image, establishing the malleability that would define its afterlife.
“A National Monument” considers the proliferation of Statue of Liberty imagery from World War I through the 1950s. Newspapers, lithographs, paintings, films, advertisements, and government posters recreate the visual saturation of the era, when the monument became increasingly linked with patriotism and the country’s role in global conflict. Works by Margaret Bourke-White, Norman Rockwell, and N.C. Wyeth appear alongside films by Alfred Hitchcock and Charlie Chaplin, demonstrating how the statue moved freely between government propaganda, mass entertainment, and fine art.
By the 1960s, the monument had become so recognizable that artists could fragment, reproduce, and distort its form without making it illegible. Thus, “Reimagining an Icon” explores this shift through Pop art and works surrounding the American Bicentennial. Exploring Pop art wouldn’t be complete without Warhol, who transformed the statue into a Pop image, while artists including Abad, Andrews, Colescott, Gail LeBoff, Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, and Ruth Thorne-Thomsen used its familiar outline to examine national identity, race, beauty, and the contradictions embedded within American ideals.
The final section, “The Statue of Liberty Today,” turns to artists who continue to test what the figure can represent. Nari Ward’s Lazarus appears with works by Craig George, Diego Romero, Paola Pivi, Hank Willis Thomas, and others. Together, they approach the statue as an active symbol through which questions of belonging, power, citizenship, and national identity can still be negotiated.
“As the preeminent allegory of the United States, the Statue of Liberty has time and again served as a symbol ripe for experimentation by a range of dynamic artists,” said exhibition curator Andrew Eschelbacher, the Carter’s former director of collections and exhibitions.
North Texas residents were invited to lend items from their own collections, ranging from clothing to rubber ducks, demonstrating the monument’s reach into everyday material culture, lifting the veil between viewer and artist. Viewer perspectives also appear throughout the galleries as part of the Carter’s Community Quotes initiative. Selected reflections are included on gallery labels, with additional voices available through an audio guide on Bloomberg Connects.
For all its familiarity, it’s clear that the Statue of Liberty is not a settled image. She has been enlarged, miniaturized, cut up, commercialized, celebrated, and challenged, with each generation using her outline to project their vision of America. The Statue of Liberty from Bartholdi to Warhol presents that history as an ongoing argument over who the nation is, whom it welcomes, and what its promises require. An icon endures not because its meaning remains fixed, but because people continue to contest it. Liberty remains recognizable because America is still deciding what she stands for.
The Carter will mark the exhibition’s opening on Aug. 15 with Liberty Talks, an afternoon of conversations, live music, poetry, and gallery experiences. The programming continues Sept. 10 with Second Thursdays: Monuments & Martinis, during which Joseph Ayala of Panther City Tattoo will offer flash tattoos inspired by the exhibition in the American traditional style. Admission is free. The exhibition will subsequently travel to the Denver Art Museum and the Munson Museum of Art in Utica, New York.