Out & About
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French Treats
Four days after France elected its new president, a group at the New York Public Library gathered to discuss America’s connections to France. Their wide-ranging discussion helped raise $350,000 for the library.
“What does the Statue of Liberty mean?” was the first question posed by the moderator, Joan Juliet Buck, at the library’s Spring Luncheon.
“It’s the product of a fantasy of fraternity,” a university professor of art history and archaeology at Columbia, Simon Schama, said.
“It’s a nice justification in statuary as to why we’re here today,” an associate professor of French at Barnard College, Caroline Weber, said.
In fact, Ms. Weber, Mr. Schama, Ms. Buck, a writer and editor who has edited Paris Vogue, and a staff writer for The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik, were there to entertain the luncheon’s 400 attendees after a meal of Arctic char and pistachio profiteroles.
For his part, Mr. Gopnik talked of Alexis De Tocqueville and the Franco-American alliance of the 1870s.
“Lincoln’s victory in the Civil War was seen as vindication in France that a republic could operate successfully,” he said.
Ms. Weber noted the “productive relationship in fashion” between the two countries. She has explored French fashion in her book “Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution” (Holt).
There was laughter over the vagaries of cultural exchange. Mr. Gopnik mentioned a hair salon near his home called “L’Amour de Hair,” while Ms. Buck said that when she moved to France, she thought she’d be “marinated in superior insights.” Instead she found herself talking about “Baywatch.”
As for the election, Ms. Weber said she was deeply impressed with the first question of the most recent presidential debate in France: “What is your conception of power and the presidency?”
“I can’t imagine any potential American candidate who’d be able to answer that question,” she said.
But the meaning of the Statue of Liberty — that’s a question that someone should ask both President Bush and President-elect Sarkozy of France.
