Le Parisien: bronze busts for Monet

Public sculpture is doing two jobs here at once. One is simple commemoration — put a beloved figure in a public place and let people meet it face to face. The other is cultural export — use a statue to move a French literary and artistic legacy into American civic space. That is the actual news this week: Jean-Marc De Pas, the sculptor based in Bois-Guilbert in Normandy, is preparing a new bronze of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and the Little Prince for installation in Miami in early 2027. ### What was announced? De Pas already made the Little Prince bronze unveiled in New York in September 2023 near Villa Albertine. Now he is making a second version for Florida, commissioned through the American Society of Le Souvenir Français and created with partners including the Saint-Exupéry Foundation and the France Florida Foundation for the Arts. The destination is the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science in Miami. ### What will the Miami sculpture look like? This one is not just the child character perched alone. De Pas chose Saint-Exupéry himself, walking hand in hand with the Little Prince. The figures are life-size — 1.90 meters for the aviator-writer and 1.35 meters for his small companion — and there will be no pedestal. That matters because public life. ### Why Miami? The New York statue made sense because Saint-Exupéry wrote *The Little Prince* while in the United States during World War II. Miami is a different bet. It puts the work on an esplanade at a major science museum and planetarium complex, which fits the book’s mix of aviation, stars, childhood wonder, and big moral themes. Basically, this is less about literary pilgrimage than about giving a French cultural icon a durable, family-friendly public home in the U.S. ### Where does Monet come into this? The broader backdrop is France’s huge Monet 2026 program. Claude Monet died on December 5, 1926, so 2026 marks the centenary of his death. Normandy Tourism says the year will feature more than 100 events between March and December across Normandy others who surrounded him. ### So is this really a Monet story? Not directly — and that is the catch. The reported event is about Saint-Exupéry and the Little Prince, not a confirmed public rollout of bronze busts of Monet, Renoir, and Degas. But the confusion makes sense. France is entering a year when Impressionist memory will be everywhere, and public art projects tied to famous cultural figures are getting swept into running on multiple tracks at once. ### Why use bronze for this kind of project? Bronze is the classic public-memory material. It survives weather, travel, handling, and the symbolic wear that comes from being touched by thousands of people. De Pas says the work will be cast by lost-wax process and finished over roughly 10 steps before being shipped. In other words, this is built less like a temporary exhibition object and more like a civic fixture. ### Why does any of this matter? Because memorial culture is shifting. The old model was a hero on a pedestal. This model is interactive, portable, and international. You do not just look up at it — you stand next to it, touch it, photograph it, and fold it into daily life. That is a very 2026 way to memorialize an artist or writer. ### Bottom line? The concrete news is a new Saint-Exupéry-and-Little-Prince bronze heading from Normandy to Miami for early 2027. The bigger story is that France’s cultural centenary machine — especially around Monet in 2026 — is turning public sculpture into a traveling, public-facing way to keep canonical figures alive.