New Statue of Liberty Museum

Logging some 4.5 million visits yearly, Liberty Island can hold 25,000 people at a time, but only 5,000 a day can enter the pedestal and the stairway to the statue’s crown accommodates only 500 daily. The new facility offers those in line an array of exhibits about the statue’s construction and history. France conceived, created, and donated the statue as a tribute to the abolition of slavery; at Liberty’s feet sprawls a broken chain. Creative fundraising abetted the gift’s installation and illumination. To build a needed pedestal, newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer engaged in proto-crowdfunding, offering to publish donors’ names and giving away miniature replicas of the statue. In six months, Pulitzer raised $200,000—today, $2 million-plus—coincidentally boosting his ’s circulation by 50,000. Next problem: how to get the statue’s torch to glow? New York ().