Medal of Liberty | |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Presented by | President Ronald Reagan |
First awarded | 1986 |
The Medal of Liberty was awarded in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan as part of the festivities commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World). The awarding of this medal took place only once, as it was linked to a specific event. No other Medals of Liberty have been awarded since Liberty Weekend 1986, although it is possible more may be awarded on future occasions.
The medal was awarded in 1986 by President Reagan to twelve outstanding individuals chosen as representative of the most distinguished naturalized citizens of the United States of America. David L. Wolper, producer of ABC's television's 1986 Independence Day Weekend media event, came up with the idea to have the President present awards to a select group of naturalized citizens as an essential part of the ceremonial festivities commemorating the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.
The Medal of Liberty is a circular, bronze medallion, seven inches in diameter, hand finished and patinated by Alex Shagin. On the obverse of the medal is the bust of Frédéric Bartholdi, facing slightly to the right and holding in his right hand his small bronze sculpture of Liberty Enlightening the World, his template for the construction of the Statue of Liberty National Monument at the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbor. Bartholdi's name appears vertically, his middle name, Auguste, to the left of his bust and his surname to the right.
Medal recipients were announced by Ted Koppel of ABC News.
Recipient | Birthplace |
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Irving Berlin (1888–1989) | Russia |
Franklin Chang Díaz (born 1950) | Costa Rica |
Kenneth B. Clark (1914–2005) | Panama Canal Zone |
Hanna Holborn Gray (born 1930) | Germany |
Bob Hope (1903–2003) | United Kingdom |
Henry Kissinger (born 1923) | Germany |
I. M. Pei (1917–2019) | China |
Itzhak Perlman (born 1945) | Israel |
James Reston (1909–1995) | United Kingdom |
Albert Sabin (1906–1993) | Russia |
An Wang (1920–1990) | China |
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) | Romania |
As of October 2020, Chang Díaz, Holborn Gray, Kissinger, and Perlman are the only living members of the Medal of Liberty.
The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in New York City, in the United States. The copper statue, a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States, was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and its metal framework was built by Gustave Eiffel. The statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886.
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was a French sculptor and painter who is best known for designing Liberty Enlightening the World, commonly known as the Statue of Liberty.
Libertas is the Roman goddess and personification of liberty. She became a politicised figure in the Late Republic, featured on coins supporting the populares faction, and later those of the assassins of Julius Caesar. Nonetheless, she sometimes appears on coins from the imperial period, such as Galba's "Freedom of the People" coins during his short reign after the death of Nero. She is usually portrayed with two accoutrements: the rod and the soft pileus, which she holds out, rather than wears.
The Statue of Freedom, also known as Armed Freedom or simply Freedom, is a bronze statue designed by Thomas Crawford (1814–1857) that, since 1863, has crowned the dome of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. Originally named Freedom Triumphant in War and Peace, a U.S. government publication now states that the statue "is officially known as the Statue of Freedom." The statue depicts a Native American female figure bearing a military helmet and holding a sheathed sword in her right hand and a laurel wreath and shield in her left.
The concept of liberty has frequently been represented by personifications, often loosely shown as a female classical goddess. Examples include Marianne, the national personification of the French Republic and its values of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, the female Liberty portrayed on United States coins for well over a century, and many others. These descend from images on ancient Roman coins of the Roman goddess Libertas and from various developments from the Renaissance onwards. The Dutch Maiden was among the first, re-introducing the cap of liberty on a liberty pole featured in many types of image, though not using the Phrygian cap style that became conventional. The 1886 Statue of Liberty by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi is a well-known example in art, a gift from France to the United States.
Goddess of Liberty may refer to:
"The New Colossus" is a sonnet by American poet Emma Lazarus (1849–1887). She wrote the poem in 1883 to raise money for the construction of a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. In 1903, the poem was cast onto a bronze plaque and mounted inside the pedestal's lower level.
Liberty Island is a federally owned island in Upper New York Bay in the United States. Its most notable feature is the Statue of Liberty, a large statue by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi that was dedicated in 1886. The island also contains the Statue of Liberty Museum, which opened in 2019 and exhibits the statue's original torch.
Édouard René Lefèbvre de Laboulaye was a French jurist, poet, author and anti-slavery activist. In 1865, he originated the idea of a monument presented by the French people to the United States that resulted in the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. He got the idea thinking that this would help strengthen their relationship with the United States.
Miss Freedom, originally named Goddess of Liberty, is the statue adorning the dome of the Georgia State Capitol since 1889. Commissioned in 1888, the hollow copper statue is painted white, weighs over 1600 lbs and is over 26 feet tall. She was sculpted with a torch in her right hand and a sword in her left. The torch is a functioning mercury-vapor lamp, casting a blue-green light at night. The torch in her right hand was supposed to be a working light continuously, but it remained dark until it was reconstructed in 1959. Tube and trolley systems have been installed so the bulb can be changed from the inside.
Hundreds of replicas of the Statue of Liberty have been created worldwide. The original Statue of Liberty is 151 feet tall and stands on a pedestal that is 154 feet tall, making the height of the entire sculpture 305 feet.
Liberty Weekend was a four-day celebration held to celebrate the 1984 restoration and the centenary of the Statue of Liberty in New York City. It began on July 3, 1986 and ended on July 6.
Alex Shagin is a coin designer.
Lady Liberty may refer to:
Zenos Frudakis, known as Frudakis, is an American sculptor whose diverse body of work includes monuments, memorials, portrait busts and statues of living and historic individuals, military subjects, sports figures and animal sculpture. Over the past four decades he has sculpted monumental works and over 100 figurative sculptures included within public and private collections throughout the United States and internationally. Frudakis currently lives and works near Philadelphia, and is best known for his sculpture Freedom, which shows a series of figures breaking free from a wall and is installed in downtown Philadelphia. Other notable works are at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina, the National Academy of Design, and the Lotos Club of New York City, the Imperial War Museum in England, the Utsukushi ga-hara Open Air Museum in Japan, and the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa.
A statue of Abraham Lincoln by American artist Gaetano Cecere is installed along Lincoln Memorial Drive in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. The 10'6" bronze sculpture depicts a young beardless Abraham Lincoln. The former president stands looking down with both hands at his sides.
The Ellis Island Honors Society (EIHS) is a United States 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to honor and preserve cultural diversity and to foster tolerance, respect and understanding among ethnic groups. The EIHS was founded in 1984 as the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations (NECO) and adopted its current name in 2017. The EIHS awards the "Ellis Island Medal of Honor" to naturalized or native-born American citizens "who preserve and celebrate the history, traditions and values of their [ethnic heritage] while exemplifying the values of the American way of life".
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), a French aristocrat and Revolutionary War hero, was widely commemorated in the U.S. and elsewhere. Below is a list of the many homages and/or tributes named in his honor:
A bronze statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk by the US artist Jeffrey L. Hall was installed in 2013 outside the Turkish Ambassador's Residence, on the periphery of Sheridan Circle, in Embassy Row, Washington, D.C., United States. The building was formerly the Embassy of Turkey in Washington, D.C., from 1936 to 1989.
Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia, also known as Progress Carrying the Light to Asia, was a plan for a colossal neoclassical sculpture. Designed in the late 1860s by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the project was to be a statue of a robed female fellah or peasant bearing a torch at the entryway of the Suez Canal in Port Said, Egypt. The statue was to stand 86 feet (26 m) high and its pedestal was to rise to a height of 48 feet (15 m). The proposed statue was declined by the Khedive, citing the expensive cost, and in 1869 the Port Said Lighthouse, designed by François Coignet, was built in the same location.