President’s Letter: April 2022

Monthly observations and insights from MAS President Elizabeth Goldstein

Several weeks ago, I went to the Statue of Liberty for the first time in several decades. I went with some family friends and their 13-year-old daughter.  She is a very smart only-child from Stockton, California—one of those teens who knows her mind but is still open to a little wonder.  No one in the family had been to New York before and she was focused on those kid-iconic things about the city.  She wanted to see Rockefeller Center because she has seen the Christmas tree lighting for most of her life, and of course, the Lego Store.

And she was interested in the Statue of Liberty.  It was lovely to see her drawn in by the wonder of the lady of the harbor.  I was, too.  It is such an unlikely project to have captured not just the eye of its benefactors, but of the public in its own time.  But for New Yorkers, it is easy to forget it is even there.

The National Park Service has opened a new museum there that is incredible.  Not only does it do an excellent job of telling the story but it is also straight-talking, as only the National Park Service can be.  The exhibits include the Statue of Liberty skeptics, who viewed the project as a tribute to the liberties the United States had not yet delivered to its formerly enslaved or female citizens.