musée Bartholdi

The Musée Bartholdi is a single-artist museum in Colmar, France, dedicated to the life and work of French sculptor Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904). Located at 30 rue des Marchands in the artist's birthplace, the museum holds the "Musée de France" label and was designated a "Maison des Illustres" by the Ministry of Culture and Communication in 2011. It preserves the most extensive collection of Bartholdi's works, displayed across three floors and 700 square metres of exhibition space. The museum's particular significance lies in its concentration of material related to Bartholdi's two most famous monuments: Liberty Enlightening the World (the Statue of Liberty) and the Lion of Belfort.

The museum's origins trace to 25 June 1907, when Auguste Bartholdi's widow, Jeanne-Émilie Bartholdi, bequeathed the family house to the town of Colmar on condition that it become a museum after her death. She died in October 1914, but the First World War delayed the project while Alsace remained under German control. The museum was finally inaugurated on 18 November 1922, following the return of Alsace to France. The building itself carries historical protection: two 17th-century portals were registered as monuments historiques by order of 18 June 1929 (with an earlier registration date of 18 June 1926 also recorded). The structure is listed in the Base Mérimée. In 2012, the museum recorded over 16,000 visitors. The museum also appeared in the 2019 documentary Liberty: Mother of Exiles about Bartholdi and the Statue of Liberty.

The museum organises its holdings across three levels, presenting sculptures, paintings, drawings, and photographs of sketches and models. The ground floor focuses on Bartholdi's works connected to Alsace. The first floor reconstructs several rooms from the couple's former apartment at 82 rue d'Assas in Paris, including a reception hall with a portrait of Bartholdi's mother by Ary Scheffer (1855) and a portrait of Auguste and Jeanne-Émilie Bartholdi by Jean Brenner; this level also contains a model room with ceramic and bronze studies for French public monuments. The second floor is devoted to Bartholdi's American works, with particular emphasis on the Statue of Liberty. The courtyard houses Bartholdi's bronze group Les Grands Soutiens du Monde (1902), depicting two male figures representing work and patriotism and a female figure representing justice supporting a globe.

Among the museum's signature works are preparatory models for monuments Bartholdi created in Colmar itself: the statue of General Rapp, the Roesselmann fountain, the Hirn monument, the Schwendi fountain, the statue of Martin Schongauer, the statue of Admiral Bruat, the statue of the small grower, and the statue of the Alsatian cooper. The museum also holds preparatory models for the Lion of Belfort, including studies from 1880. The second floor's American rooms contain particularly significant Liberty-related material: a full-scale plaster model of the left ear and a section of the hair of the Statue of Liberty, preserved by Bartholdi as a souvenir and the only surviving material evidence from the workshops on the Rue de Chazelles in Paris. Also displayed are limited-edition terracotta models sold to finance the statue's construction, and sculptures of La Fayette and a bronze group of Washington and La Fayette. Two large paintings by Bartholdi, La Californie de jadis and La Californie nouvelle, shown at the 1876 Philadelphia World's Fair, hang in the stairwell gallery. Other notable works include Le Martyr moderne, an allegory of the myth of Prometheus symbolising Poland's patriotic uprising against the Russian tsars, and Die Sieben Schwaben (1855), a bronze group based on the Ludwig Bechstein fairy tale. The museum also held until 2018 a collection of objects attesting to the long-established Jewish community in Alsace.

The museum occupies Bartholdi's birthplace at 30 rue des Marchands in Colmar. The town house itself dates primarily from the second half of the 17th century, though Renaissance arcades discovered during restoration indicate older structures on the site. At the end of the 18th century, the house belonged to the family of Étienne Meyer; his daughter Catherine Dorothée married Jean Charles Bartholdi, and their son Jean Charles (1791-1836) was Auguste Bartholdi's father. The building's two 17th-century gates are protected as historical monuments. In 2011, the entire building received the "Maisons des Illustres" label from the Ministry of Culture and Communication, recognising its status as the preserved home of an eminent figure.