With democracy under siege, August Bartholdi takes the Statue of Liberty from concept to monument, revealing the necessity of art, collective effort, and resilience required on the imperfect journey to ensuring liberty has a home.

SYNOPSIS:

August, a celebrated, frustrated French artist haunted by the loss of a father to memory, a brother to mental illness, and a home to conquest, crawls his way out of war-torn Paris to see if America might make a home for his Colossus. Unconvinced, he tours the landscape and the people and sees in his travels and his mind's eye a new, clean, layered, exciting world being born, worthy of his 17-story idea. But can he shift his old-world desire to win the approval of benefactors, and can the country shift to celebrate those who build it rather than those who reap its rewards? Maybe - but it will take the words of Emma Lazarus and her journey from privileged poet to groundbreaking activist, the ingenuity of Joseph Pulitzer and the launch of the first-ever grassroots fundraising effort, the spare dimes of 500,000 Americans, and the hard work of countless names lost to history to see it through.

Also: Will WEB Duboise embrace the challenge of the emerging black community even as it is erased from the statue's face? What is the role of the artist? Can the levers of democracy empower the poor when the rich shy away amid the launch of mass immigration? Once it is done, what will it mean? Can we, today, carry on such a colossal legacy? What will be lost if we don't?

*Note: This feature incorporates both truthful, shockingly inspiring direct quotes, true twists of fortune, and biography, alongside the experiences of the marginalized communities instrumental to our history but too often lost on the page.

THE GIANT LIGHT