Friday, 10/18/2019 - 6:30pm. Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, 24 West 12th Street, New York, NY 10011-8604. Drs. Ann Wilkins and David Wilkins, two of the curators of the Sisters in Liberty: From Florence, Italy to New York, New York exhibition at the Ellis Island Museum of Immigration (October 18, 2019—April 26, 2020), will discuss Pio Fedi’s monumental Libertà della Poesia (1883) on the tomb of the Risorgimento author Giambattista Niccolini in the church of Santa Croce, in Florence.

The illustrated talk will emphasize the relationship between Fedi’s statue and Liberty Enlightening the World in New York Harbor (a.k.a. the Statue of Liberty) and discuss how these contemporaneous images of Liberty grew out of the struggles for self-determination that swept across Europe during the 19th century.